Shadow of the Counter-Tradition: Trump’s Futurist Coalition

by Richard Heathen

Richard Heathen explores the potential rise of a Counter-Tradition through the lens of transhumanism and AI, speculating that figures like Donald Trump, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk may be key players in ushering in a new and artificial “sacral” order that inverts traditional values by centring on advanced technology and futurism.

In a recent article, I explored the Traditionalist concepts of initiation and the Counter-Initiation within the context of transhumanism, AI, and the futurist theory of the Singularity. I speculated that AI and transhumanism could be the fulfilment of the Counter-Tradition and, if it is so, we were seeing the very beginnings of a new sacral order centred around a sentient AI and in such a context that the merging of man and machine would represent not just a pragmatic, but sacral function.

In this article I will continue along a similar line of inquiry but narrowing in to focus on our current moment in history. If what I have previously suggested is to come to pass it has to begin somewhere. If we are to see the emergence of a new form of sacrality, the current phase of civilizational listlessness and nihilism must come to an end. For five hundred years the forces of subversion and dissolution have waged war on Tradition, spirit, and higher meaning. In this half millennia of revolutionary struggle, the agents of subversion have worked to not only overthrow anything resembling a correct and just order but have also worked diligently towards corrupting all measures intended to halt the spread of the modern disorders. If we are to see the rise of the Counter-Tradition (the phase of negation can only go on for so long), then eventually a positive vision will have to be established to usher in what Guénon called the “great parody” — the inverted imitation of a true Traditional order.

ANTI-TRADITION VS COUNTER-TRADITION

From the middle of the 20th century, American oligarchs and their activist foot soldiers have been working to undermine whatever remained of the last vestiges of normality that still lingered, first domestically and then abroad. Through a constant, sustained, and well-funded effort, the elites and their allies have attacked and undermined the ethnic solidarity and identity of not just white Americans, but practically all European-descended peoples. This undermines a central pillar of identity for whites, as well as our sense of community. Without a sense of ethnic identity to give a man’s life context and ground him in an embedded community, as well as to impart a chronological context and feeling of connection to history and to his ancestors, he is likely to drift aimlessly like a boat without a rudder. Such a lost and anchorless being is the most susceptible to the many manipulations so prevalent in our contemporary age.

The latest phase of the revolution has resulted in the erosion of the family through subversive attacks on normative gender roles and behaviours and in this way it has fostered and normalized aberrant sexual behaviour. This latest attack on normality by the revolutionary vanguard has seen the depolarization and confusion of gender. From the creation of false “non-binary” gender identities to transsexualism, this depolarization of gender reduces this primordial polarization of humanity down to a commercial identity that can be fashionably chosen or discarded at will. It is yet another symptom of the disintegrating individualism of modernity — the logic of which dissolves all organic identities (and by extension communities) because an organic community cannot exist without organic, embedded, and unchosen identities.

All of this has been well documented in great detail elsewhere and is well beyond the scope of our current discussion. It will not be elaborated upon here, but it is necessary to mention as it serves as the background for our current discussion.

The result of this perpetual revolution, particularly the last sixty or so years, has not only been an erosion of identity but has resulted in a loss of meaning for Western Man, and the rise of an overwhelming sense of nihilism and despair as its necessary consequence.

The dissolution of our current moment has gone so far as to attack the economic myth that previously had given the common man a sense of comfort and security. Until recently the average working-class man could — if he worked hard — likely earn enough money to live a comfortable semi-bourgeois existence, find a wife and still enjoy the basic comfort of a family and home. This economic myth has all but collapsed as outsourcing has shipped many jobs overseas and mass immigration has devalued the cost of labour domestically, the result of labour inflation being that even home ownership, which used to be seen as something that was the provision of almost anyone willing to work hard, has slipped from the reach of many people.

Women also entered the workforce en masse over the last century, which was not only the opening salvo of labour inflation but also so-called “women’s liberation” marking the beginning of the most final disintegration of the family (which I have discussed in a previous article and will not elaborate upon here because it would take us too far away from the central idea of our current discussion).

Many in the West are lonely and living quiet lives of despair. A profound lack of meaning exists in our contemporary world and this isn’t new. It was a theme featured in Ride the Tiger, written by Julius Evola in 1961, and the theme of nihilism in the West goes all the way back to Nietzsche, perhaps earlier. In our current age, this feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness has reached epic proportions. There is a reason for the surge in suicide and suicidal tendencies in young people (which I also mentioned in a previous article).

To many, the current state of affairs in the West appears completely Satanic, and little wonder — the most flagrant and obnoxious degeneracy is paraded throughout our streets and celebrated with the moniker of “pride”. The very notion of spiritual reality is scoffed at and viewed as silly by an atheistic society that sees itself as one made up of supposed “stark-eyed realists”. These people condescendingly view any pursuit of a higher reality as childish and use immature pejoratives such as “sky-daddy” to ridicule the very notion of divinity. It is truly ironic how so many of these types are trapped in a form of arrested development, obsessively watching media and collecting toys made for children. It is these types as well who fall over themselves to believe every ridiculous new idea that is propagated by the social engineers to consolidate the power of the ruling class. This in itself shows how desperate people are to believe in something for despite their condescending contempt for Christianity, they have fallen into believing ideas far more damaging and ridiculous than they imagine the teachings of the Christian Church to be.

Christianity is the spiritual Tradition that has defined Western civilization for the last 1,500 years but is ruthlessly mocked and undermined by the culture at large, often by leftists who will mockingly champion Satan as a sort of subversive mascot as a means of antagonizing Christian conservatives. Despite how vulgar, crude, degenerate and dangerous this is on the temporal level, none of this represents the Counter-Tradition as described by Guénon. Despite its dark destructive tendencies, on both the personal and civilizational level, none of this cultural refuse represents anything but lowest instincts of vulgar hedonists and spiteful mutants. They are the dregs of society who have been weaponized by the elites. While this is undeniably damaging it does not, and cannot, represent the great parody described by Guénon.

To see this illustrated, let’s look at what Guénon has to say about the difference between mere anti-Tradition and the Counter-Tradition

The previous chapter was concerned with matters that, like everything else belonging essentially to the modern world, are radically anti-traditional; but in a sense they go even further than ‘anti-tradition’, understood as being pure negation and nothing more, for they lead toward the setting up of something that can more appropriately be called a ‘counter-tradition’…

For this purpose, the part to be played by the ‘counter-initiation’ must again be referred to: after having worked always in the shadows to inspire and direct invisibly all modern movements, it will in the end contrive to ‘exteriorize’, if that is the right word, something that will be as it were the counterpart of a true tradition, at least as completely and as exactly as it can be so within the limitations necessarily inherent in all possible counterfeits…

It may be observed in this connection that the ‘counter-initiation’, although it invented and propagated for its own purposes all the modern ideas that together represent the merely negative ‘anti-tradition’, is perfectly conscious of the falsity of those ideas, and obviously knows all too well what attitude to adopt with respect to them; but that in itself indicates that the intention in propagating them can only have been the accomplishment of a transitory and preliminary phase, for no such enterprise of conscious falsehood could be in itself the true and only aim in view; it was only intended to prepare for the ultimate coming of something different, something that should appear to constitute a more ‘positive’ accomplishment, namely, the ‘counter-tradition’ itself.

[The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times]

From this description it is clear that Guénon sees the period of ‘anti-Tradition’ as one of a dissolutive phase of pure negation where the structures, institutions and Weltanschauung of the Traditional order were torn down and destroyed and the result of which is civilizational nihilism by necessity. When these supports have been destroyed, as they have been in the West today, a sense of overwhelming despair and meaninglessness is the inevitable conclusion, which is indeed the current state of affairs here in the Occident. However, using Guénon as our guide, this is not the final end point of the Counter-Tradition because the end point of this process is not mere nihilism but a positive project — an order that imitates an authentic Traditional order but is its inversion.

Thus, continuing from the line of inquiry established in the previous article, where I posited that an artificial general intelligence (AGI) could be the centre of such an order, and transhumanism would constitute the Counter-Initiation, it becomes clear that a form of futurism would by necessity be the means or vehicle through which a counter-tradition centred on a sacral view of advanced technology would manifest itself.

Anti-Tradition represents pure negation — a dark and violent refutation of anything and everything belonging to the world of Tradition. The Counter-Tradition must by definition represent a positive project, which will appear as a beacon of hope and salvation to a world plunged into the dark pits of nihilistic atomization for so long. As such, the purpose of the entire anti-Traditional stage — especially the last decade by my estimate — has been to sink the world into a pit of nihilistic despair so as to prepare the way for the Counter-Tradition.

For this to come to pass, our current order, institutions and civilizational ideology must by necessity be overthrown and drastically transformed, which would amount to a complete revolution. The false and demoralizing ideology of intersectionality will by necessity be replaced, as will the idiotic ideologues that make up our so-called elites. Those that want to remain in positions of influence will have a dramatic shift in ideology and the rest will simply be discarded as casualties of building a new order. The revolution always eats its children and this time will be no different.

This inevitably raises the question of how could such a transformation possibly take place. Like all revolutions, it will require a cadre of counter-elites dissatisfied with the current order and who want to build a new one. If we survey the current political landscape, the only real avenue for such a possibility to manifest liess with Donald Trump and the futurist elite circle that has gravitated towards his campaign.

TRUMP’S SILICON VALLEY COALITION

Trump has drawn together an alliance that includes a powerful and influential faction of Silicon Valley’s tech elite — particularly Elon Musk. Musk, the richest man in the world (on paper at least), has increasingly branded himself as a free speech crusader whose politics are ostensibly classical liberal. Musk appeared to buy Twitter on a whim and has branded himself as a “free speech absolutist” while there are significant discrepancies between that and his management of Twitter. Musk’s reign marks a significant improvement over its previous management. Indeed, Musk has even spilled the beans on the government requests for censorship, which he apparently did not accommodate.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump and Musk talk on the phone regularly and Musk has been donating $45 million a month to a Trump political action committee (PAC). After the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Elon Musk officially endorsed him. Elon and his allies have even engaged in an elite-influencing campaign to swing elite support from the Democrats to Trump. There have also been rumours of Musk taking up some sort of advisory position in a second Trump administration. Musk recently hosted a Twitter space with Trump, which ended up being a casual two-hour conversation, the result of which was to showcase the many areas where Donald Trump and Elon Musk converge in their worldview. Musk has been seen to be recruiting his fellow elites both behind the scenes at a shadowy gathering in Palm Beach as far back as February, and publicly on Twitter.

According to Axios, Musk, along with Tucker Carlson and tech billionaire David Sacks, was instrumental in persuading Donald Trump to pick JD Vance as his running mate. Far from picking a “weird guy” to appeal to the terminally online like so many armchair pundits have proposed, this was a pragmatic pick meant to solidify alliances with not only Elon Musk and David Sacks, but most of all Peter Thiel who is Vance’s sponsor and patron.

Peter Thiel also funded Trump’s 2016 campaign and has financial ties to Palantir, a surveillance company that was co-founded by Peter Thiel and In-Q-Tel, a company owned by the CIA as well as a number of other investors. When Palantir began, it’s only client was the CIA and it was tasked with creating surveillance software for the agency. Today Palantir is working with the US military in Ukraine, where it uses its software to find and track satellite images from all around the globe processing information at record time to aide in the war effort. Thiel was also an early investor in Facebook and joined the board of Facebook in 2005 until he stepped down in 2022 to focus on support for “Trump-aligned candidates”.

Thiel isn’t the only member of Palantir who is supporting Trump. Peter Thiel’s co-founder of Palantir is also reported to be supporting the Trump campaign through the America PAC — the same PAC that Musk has been reported to be donating $45 million a month to. Other supporters of the America PAC include Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the founders of Gemini cryptocurrency exchange.

Interestingly, Thiel was also an early investor in a company called Clearview AI, which created a facial recognition AI software that was used to identify Trump supporters who attended the Stop the Steal protests and gained entry into the Capitol Building. The company’s CEO bragged about this in an interview with NBC. Clearview AI claims its facial recognition software has the ability to identify anyone in the world.

ELON MUSK’S OPTIMISTIC FUTURISM

Of course Thiel isn’t the only Trump ally with ties to the entrenched infrastructure of the US Federal Government and intelligence community, or what one could call the deep state. Through his ownership of SpaceX, Elon Musk has very strong ties to the US Federal Government. In fact, his largest customer is the US Government. Starlink, created by SpaceX, has aided the military cause in Ukraine by providing internet connection and thus digital communication and intelligence for the Ukrainian military free of charge.

There was a bit of controversy when Musk limited the Ukrainian military’s use of Starlink by blocking the Ukrainians from using it during an operation for an attempted drone offensive on Russian territory, reportedly fearing such an act would provoke a nuclear response from the Russians, showing the moderating influence Musk has been able to wield. NASA has also become reliant on SpaceX. Ever since it cancelled its space shuttle program, NASA has no way of transporting astronauts to the International Space Station than by hitching a ride with SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

But unlike Thiel, who has entwined himself with the shady underworld of intelligence agencies and the surveillance state and has thus kept a somewhat low profile (at least as is possible for someone of his wealth and overt influence), Musk has been more proactive and has cultivated a much more positive and aspirational public image for himself. As mentioned, he has branded himself a “free speech absolutist” while espousing an ideology that claims to be centrist, moderate and based on common sense.

His initiatives have greatly contributed to his public image as they are also much more inspirational than the covert machinations of Peter Thiel. Instead of creating surveillance software and assisting in the round-up of misguided conservatives who played dress-up at the Capitol Building, he is creating a space where those people can speak freely without getting shut down for offending the sensibilities of the progressive left. Musk has posited a futurist vision of space travel and colonization. Musk recently posted on Twitter:

And now it is time for America to reach far greater heights by sending astronauts to Mars!

Ultimately, anyone who wants to be a space traveller and help build a new civilization on Mars should be able to do so.

That is an inspiring future!

Musk’s futurist vision is also transhumanist and in statements he has proposed a future scenario where humanity transcends its current state by merging with technology so as to keep pace with AI. With his company Neuralink, Musk is at the cutting edge of transhumanism. According to Musk:

Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence. It’s mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself, particularly output…

Some high bandwidth interface to the brain will be something that helps achieve a symbiosis between human and machine intelligence and maybe solves the control problem and the usefulness problem.

The steps towards the merger of man and machine have already begun. Neuralink has already successfully implanted an interface into human beings. Earlier this year, Neuralink revealed the first human test subject; thirty-year-old Noland Arbaugh from Arizona, who was disabled from the shoulders down in a swimming accident, as the first human recipient of Neuralink’s wireless brain-computer interface (BCI). These devices have been cleared by the FDA since 2005, such as Blackrock Neurotech’s “Utah Array” being the first such device; however, the implant created by Neuralink represents a more sophisticated iteration and an advancement.

In my previous article, I mentioned how, according to Guénon, certain deformities and disabilities were disqualifications for certain forms of initiation and how he speculated that such disqualifications for initiation could possibly be qualifications for a counter-initiation. If transhumanism is in fact the Counter-Initiation, the fact that those who would be disqualified from a true initiation are those who are the first to qualify for the transhumanist mockery is certainly expected.

Another Silicon Valley billionaire supporting Trump is Marc Andreessen, who made his fortune as a co-founder of Netscape and has described himself as a TESCREAList, which is an acronym that stands for transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism and longtermism. I am not going to go into the meaning of each ideological component of this acronym as each one is an ideology in and of itself and the acronym is used to represent an order of ideas that are apparently frequently encountered in the circles around Silicon Valley. But if we cast a cursory glance at the ideologies listed in this acronym, it’s obvious that they belong to a hypermodernist or futurist context. We see an affinity for transhumanism, a belief in the singularity and an ambition for space travel. These are ideas very similar to those commonly expressed by Elon Musk and seem to represent an ideological current within Trump’s coalition of elite supporters. Indeed, I would be surprised if Trump himself wasn’t sympathetic to these ideas as they seem to be a more visionary and imaginative expression of his own brand and sensibilities.

Last year, Andreessen penned a short futurist manifesto — consisting of mostly inane platitudes — articulating his futurist vision, one that sounds remarkably similar to the author I discussed at length in my previous article, albeit with less engaging prose. He lashes out at elite policy initiatives, such as sustainable development, that hinder growth and technology development. He extols capitalism and takes aim at the conventional whipping boys of conservatives and libertarians, such as “statism”, “authoritarianism”, “collectivism”, “central planning”, and “socialism”. He even goes so far as to allude to the so-called dynamism of liberal democracy. One could see in this a retreat to conventional conservatism with all its middling and tedious bourgeois values. He also extols Nietzsche, disparaging the ‘Last Man’ and expressing the goal of “[b]ecoming Technological Supermen”. One wonders if hitting the familiar notes of Conservative Inc, including the praise of liberal democracy, is completely genuine or if he is perhaps simply pandering to the pre-existing beliefs of his audience, seeing as the bland bourgeois values of liberal democracy are completely incompatible with such notions? Perhaps it’s meant to signal to more influential groups?

TRUMP AND THE FOREIGN POLICY ESTABLISHMENT

It appears as if Trump’s elite base of support isn’t limited to a rebellious faction of Silicon Valley futurists but also includes more classical elites. In mid-June, I began to see favourable presentations of Trump in Foreign Affairs, a foreign policy magazine published by the infamous Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR has been the subject of many conspiracy theories — some more credible than others. It is, however, undeniable that the organization has historically been very influential with members in government, finance and technology.  

In June 2024, Foreign Affairs published two articles that read very favourably to Trump. The first being “Trump the Realist”, which, instead of the typical histrionics that one has come to expect from such publications, portrays Trump as a stark-eyed foreign policy realist who views foreign policy through a pragmatic lens and not through an ideological one. It depicts Trump’s rise as the natural product of “impersonal forces”, including a natural decline of power preceded by a long period of hegemony, and of a natural geopolitical realignment.

If the first article mentioned was complimentary of Trump, then the second article, “The Return of Peace through Strength”, was almost sycophantic with its praise of Trump as a prudent statesman in the tradition of Andrew Jackson and with other favourable comparisons between Trump, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, respectively. This favourable comparison of Trump was contrasted with a portrayal of sitting President Joe Biden, who is depicted as being as ineffective as he is incoherent. While the article doesn’t refer to the current President’s mental state, the author makes clear his belief that policywise the current administration is ineffective, contradictory, and without substance.

In the context of our current discussion, a second Trump administration governing from a futurist perspective may not contradict the goals of the CFR as may seem to be the case at first glance. The CFR website recently published an article decrying America’s lack of leadership in the realm of AI and this is leadership that a second Trump administration with its cadre of Silicon Valley futurist supporters would be inclined to provide. Remember the vision of those thus far mentioned in Trump’s futurist coalition is one in which these technologies are harnessed and integrated deeply into the fabric of society, whereas the Democrats have no vision greater than that of pandering to the dregs of society in a social race to the bottom.

Some may object and say that Trump’s nationalist vision contradicts the globalist agenda of the CFR, and directly so. Yet Trump has been very flexible about his ostensible nationalism from the early days of his first term when he called himself both a nationalist and globalist. Trump doesn’t appear to be a man driven by a clearly defined belief system and has shown himself to be flexible on many issues, including the censorship of Tik Tok and his views on cryptocurrency. Regarding the latter, Trump formerly expressed skepticism and concern about cryptocurrencies, saying that he was “not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air”. He also expressed concern that they have the potential to be used in criminal activity and yet today he has wholeheartedly embraced Bitcoin, going so far as to suggest a whole host of Bitcoin-friendly policies, including proposing that the US Federal Government be an investor and holder of Bitcoin.

The CFR has made it clear the priority they put on the development of new technologies, such as AI, with the countries that are on the cutting edge of these technologies having a definitive military and thus geopolitical advantage. Recall that Peter Thiel — who is a dedicated Trump supporter — has been involved in constructing the infrastructure of the surveillance state and his company Palantir is using its technology to aid the war in Ukraine, both of which are supported by the CFR.

Another factor to consider, and a matter of great importance to America’s foreign policy elites, is the fact that the United States is facing a legitimacy crisis as a result of making intersectionality its state ideology. This can be seen by the fact that military recruitment for the regime has done a drastic nosedive in recent years, and a powerful and committed military force is a very necessary ingredient for any empire, even one based on high finance. As I wrote previously:

As the American regime has increasingly marginalized European-descended Americans — using whites as a boogeyman to galvanize their coalition of client groups with very little in common other than a shared hatred towards a scapegoat chosen by their political sponsors — the result, unsurprisingly, is that whites are deciding en masse that they will no longer fight for a regime that openly despises them. There are families who have served the US military for generations, many of whom have given up on the forces, with older veterans and servicemen actively convincing younger family members not to join. Such families with a multigenerational tradition of military service — which have historically made up a large percentage of recruits — are a form of civilizational capital that cannot be recreated overnight. Indeed, how does one simply recreate a warrior caste? Ironically, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth recently said — when referring to US military families — that the US shouldn’t rely on a warrior caste for military service. It looks like she may just get her wish.

While whites are abandoning the military, blacks and Hispanics aren’t picking up the slack. Indeed, the ideology of the American regime has completely demoralized every demographic. On the one hand, they have doubled down on their contempt for Americans of European descent who haven’t wholeheartedly bought into the state ideology of ugliness and degeneracy, while, on the other hand, regime cadres have no case for why these other groups should stand up and fight for the regime. According to America’s agents of cultural revolution, America is a racist nation built upon the genocide of one race and the slavery of another, which still indiscriminately kills innocent blacks every day. Not to mention that women, gays and transsexuals — according to this narrative — have been systemically oppressed since America’s very founding. Assuming one actually takes the intersectionality narrative seriously, why would any self-respecting member of these groups want to fight for an oppressive colonial state built upon the pillars of slavery and genocide which, according to the narrative, is still governed by the principles of patriarchy and white supremacy?

This could be the very ideological contradiction that brings the whole thing down. America’s global military supremacy is facing its first true challenge in decades at a time of unprecedented weakness.

Indeed, according to the mainstream press, America has the smallest military force in 80 years, 41,000 personnel short of their 2023 recruitment goal. All the while, the Global American Empire is facing a challenge the likes of which it hasn’t seen since the Cold War and — at the same time — the homeland is more divided than ever.

This situation only becomes increasingly exasperated as time goes by; the US Navy has recently announced it will decommission 17 vessels because of the severe manpower shortage affecting all branches of the US Military. Political divisions in the US have become increasingly intensified over the last several years, to the point where many see their domestic opposition as either a greater threat to their security and way of life — as in the case of the Republicans — or as an extension of/agents of their foreign enemies — as in the case of the Democrats. All of this while America’s global position is facing unprecedented challenges in the form of the growing — albeit informal — alliance between Russia, China and Iran.

This state of affairs certainly hasn’t escaped the notice of America’s foreign policy elites, and if America hopes to face this challenge with any prospect of retaining its position as the leading world power, it will have to figure out a way to bridge these gaps very quickly. To this end, the Trump campaign is again the only viable possibility on the table. Donald Trump was recently on stage with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a lifelong Democrat — and received his endorsement. Kennedy will be campaigning with Trump, and is reported to have said that other prominent disgruntled Democrats will soon endorse Trump and join him on the campaign trail. Indeed, the Trump campaign has already begun using the term “Unity Party” to discuss this alliance against the current intersectionality regime.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump

The degree to which this will influence the election is hard to gauge, but RFK Jr. himself was previously campaigning for president — before he suspended his campaign to support Trump — and has gained credibility in certain corners of the internet as a anti-establishment candidate on issues like corporate influence, public health, and foreign intervention — an issue he shares with Trump. While the foreign policy of RFK Jr. and Trump could appear to be at odds with the CFR, as we’ve seen, the Council seems to be signalling a willingness to adopt a more restrained approach to global power acquisition through its journal Foreign Policy.

If you are the member of a shadowy elite and are feeling global empire slip from your grasp in real time because the plebs can’t get along due to the loss of popular consensus, itself a result of the bumbling of inept middle managers, wouldn’t you consider a course correction? Yet, perhaps I am overstating the power and influence of the foreign policy elite, namely the CFR.

Maybe, but maybe not.

There is an aura of mystery surrounding the CFR. It has a murky history and according to historian Carroll Quigley is itself just the outer layer of a secret society bent on global domination. In his book Tragedy and Hope, Quigley documents the formation of this network, its goals and its members. Quigley wrote in Tragedy and Hope:

Cecil Rhodes organized a Secret Society in 1891. Among Ruskin’s most devoted disciples at Oxford were a group of intimate friends including Arnold Toynbee, Alfred (later Lord) Milner, Arthur Glazebrook, George (later Sir George) Parkin, Philip Lyttelton Gell, and Henry (later Sir Henry) Birchenough. These were so moved by Ruskin that they devoted the rest of their lives to carrying out his ideas. A similar group of Cambridge men including Reginald Baliol Brett (Lord Esher), Sir John B. Seeley, Albert (Lord) Grey, and Edmund Garrett were also aroused by Ruskin’s message and devoted their lives to the extension of the British Empire.

This association was formally established on February 5, 1891, when Rhodes and Stead organized a secret society of which Rhodes had been dreaming for sixteen years. In this secret society, Rhodes was to be the leader; Stead, Brett (Lord Esher), and Milner were to form an executive committee; Arthur (Lord) Balfour, (Sir) Harry Johnston, Lord Rothschild, Albert (Lord) Grey, and others were listed as potential members of a ‘Circle of Initiates’; while there was to be an outer circle known as the ‘Association of Helpers’ (later organized by Milner as the Round Table organization).

This raises the obvious question of how did Quigley learn of this group. He was a professor at Georgetown University, where he instructed young people that would go on to important positions in the world, including former US President Bill Clinton who singled Quigley out for praise while he was campaigning for President in 1991 during a stop off at Georgetown.

I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments.

In the book Tomorrow the World: The Birth of US Global Supremacy (which I found a couple of years ago when it was recommended on the website of Foreign Affairs), the author Stephen Wertheim reveals how the State Department tasked the members of the CFR with constructing the post-war international order, which, in the words of the author, “acted as a proto-national security state”. The achievement of the current global order and the central role played by this organization appears to confirm the role that Quigley attributed to the elites behind the CFR. In regards to the post-war order, Quigley wrote:

The creation of the international organizations and arrangements of the postwar world was a victory of the Atlantic Powers and was more specifically the victory of the Anglo-American internationalists. It was the triumph of a belief which, as we shall see, came to them from Rhodes and Milner, through the Round Table Groups, through the Royal Institute of International Affairs, through the American branch of this Institute (the Council on Foreign Relations) to the Rockefeller Foundation and other foundations, and through them to the State Department and other departments of the United States government. The chief aims of this combination were largely accomplished by the middle of the 1940s, when the United States assumed, and fulfilled, Britain’s old role as world leader.

According to Quigley, the goal of this society was the expansion of the power and influence of the British Empire, a mantle which was later taken up by America and the global order organized by the members of the CFR. However, when reading Quigley, one gets the impression that something has been lost between then and now in regards of the intended nobility of this scheme. It was, at least ostensibly, meant to preserve the English tradition at home and uplift the working classes while maintaining and consolidating the Empire. In the end, Western civilization has been overrun to the point where our people are on their way to being strangers in their own homelands and our former, more noble customs are on their way to extinction. This was not the goal of this project, at least not according to how Quigley outlined it. This leads me to the conclusion that he was either grossly misled about the goals of the project, or that he was diligently playing the role of PR man and propagandist, or perhaps something went drastically wrong somewhere along the way and the people and aims involved were severely corrupted.

FUTURISM AND THE OCCULT WAR

In his book Men Among the Ruins, Julius Evola discussed the “third dimension of history”, where he posited an occult war being carried out by dark forces working behind the scenes covertly steering human history. In chapter thirteen, he outlined what he believed to be the tactics of this occult war and two such tactics are mentioned here that are of particular interest to the current discussion. These are ‘scapegoats’ and ‘dilution/surrogates’. In the tactic of scapegoats, when the disintegrating action of the enemy becomes too blatant and too crude, a reaction is unleashed upon certain groups and individuals, which are only provisionally responsible and thus represent the tools and pawns of greater forces. These expendable agents are sacrificed and those groups and individuals working towards a corrective action are then satisfied, believing they have dealt with the enemy when the true enemy lays undamaged and could even be using those attempting to engage in such a reconstructive action to clean the board of elements that are no longer of use. I posit this as our current situation. According to Evola:

It may happen that after the effects of the destructive work reach the material plane, they become so visible as to provoke a reaction, and thus ideas and symbols are employed for a defence and a reconstruction…

When the secret forces of world subversion are fearful of exposure or realize that, due to special circumstances, the direction imparted from backstage has become obvious, at least in its major effects, they employ the scapegoat tactic. They try to shift the enemy’s attention onto elements that are responsible only partially, or in a subordinated fashion, for their own wrongful deeds. A reaction is unleashed against those elements, which then become the scapegoats. Thus, after a pause, the secret front may resume its work, because its opponents believe they have identified the enemy and dealt with it…

This leads us to what Evola called the tactic of dilution/surrogates. This strategy amounts to a redirection away from a pivot towards a Traditional worldview in times of crises. In the sphere of the Right, we can see how any impulse towards a rejection of modernity and towards a Traditional worldview has been stunted and instead that energy has been directed towards secular ideologies, such as nationalism, which represents an earlier stage of the deviation of modernity, and while even Evola himself posited that nationalism could represent a positive and reconstructive phase, provided that it was the essential which was emphasized and that the nationalism in question was seen as a transitionary phase towards something higher, few if any of our contemporaries view nationalism in such a way.

When we adjust our gaze to that of mainstream politics, even the prosaic and subversive view of nationalism mentioned above is shocking to your average voter unfamiliar with right-wing thought. Where many on the real Right have explored Traditionalist ideas and rejected them in favour of “more practical” ideologies, the average mainstream voter can’t even process a simple blood and soil nationalism. Indeed, we have gotten to the point where a “Return to Tradition” to the average voter would mean returning to the 1990s and to a permissive classical liberalism that simply allowed the excessive social degeneracy that exists now, instead of forcing it down the throat of the collective public. According to Evola:

Let us now discuss the tactic of dilution, which constitutes a particular aspect of the ‘tactic of surrogates.’ The main example that I will now introduce must be prefaced with the following: the process that has led to the current crises has remote origins and has developed in several phases. In each of these phases the crisis was already present, though in a latent or potential form. The theory of ‘progress’ may be regarded as one of the suggestions spread by the secret forces of world subversion so that attention would be diverted from the origins and the process of dissolution could proceed, carried forth by the illusion of the triumphs of technological-industrial civilization. The tragic events of recent times have provoked a partial awakening from this hypnosis. Many people have begun to realize that the march of so-called progress paralleled a race toward the abyss. Thus, to stop and return to the origins as the only way to restore a normal civilization has been the inspiring vision for many. Next, the occult front employed new means to prevent any radical reaction. Here, too, it employed the slogans of ‘anachronism’ and ‘reactionary and retrograde forces’; then it caused the forces that aimed at a return to the origins to be led toward stages in which the crisis and the disease were present in less extreme forms, though still clearly visible. This trap worked as well. The leaders of world subversion naturally know that, once this is done, there is no longer a real danger: it is enough to wait and soon we will be back at the starting point, by following processes analogous to the ones that have already occurred, but now without the possibility of any resistance to the dissolution.

Looking at the manifesto written by Andreessen, it vehemently asserts the myth of progress. The entire raison d’être of his manifesto being to regress his readers back to the blasé ideology of early liberalism. Andreessen even criticized “blind deference to tradition”, no doubt using the common and colloquial meaning of the word. Yet the very impulse to state — unprovoked — that one will not be beholden to tradition, even if the word is taken in its lowest and most prosaic sense, betrays an unfavourable disposition.

Futurism almost matches what Evola says above verbatim. It heavily leverages the myth of progress and loudly celebrates the supposed triumphs of industrial civilization. At a time when the social and environmental consequences of industrial civilization become ever more obvious, an ever-greater proportion of the populace has become skeptical of the alleged benefits of industrial civilization and we are seeing an elite movement celebrating man’s mastery over materiality. This movement may just ride the coattails of Donald Trump into power and thereby usher in a new order.

As time goes on, I suspect futurism will be used to give the masses a sense of meaning by providing the people with an edifying vision of the world and thus persuading modern man to be more of what he is, or, to put it more accurately — what he has become. He will be redirected away from his discontent with the modern world, which could, for some at least, result in disillusionment with the frenzied vacillations of modernity and towards the pursuit of transcendence and being. Instead many will be distracted from such a possible outcome, lead by the pied piper of futurism towards the next stage of dissolution and deviation.

All of this begs the question: are Trump and his coalition of futurists part of some grand occult conspiracy? Perhaps, but not necessarily. According to both Evola and Guénon, through their subtle influence the forces of global subversion implant suggestions to the culture at large and those who act upon them believe they are acting on their own volition but are in fact acting upon suggestions given by forces beyond their understanding.

Interestingly, in 2016, Trump was guided to victory by Steve Bannon whose worldview is heavily influenced by the Traditionalist School, at least according to Benjamin Teitelbaum, author of War for Eternity. According to Teitelbaum’s account, Bannon’s Traditionalism was itself quite Americanized, representing a contaminated deviation yet still retaining enough substance to represent a starting position. In 2016, the Trump movement contained many promising elements and it looked for a moment that a genuine challenge might not only be mounted to the ruling liberal coalition, but to the levelling tendencies of modernity itself. However, it wasn’t long until these promising aspects of the Trump movement were expelled after the Charlottesville debacle, first Bannon and then the wholesale demonization of the parts of his coalition that fell outside the liberal consensus.

From the beginning, there was a battle for the soul of the movement around Trump and after the purge of the true right-wing all that’s left, beyond a few anomalies, is “based” minorities, homosexuals, transexuals, “Q-types” and old conservatives with a penchant for silly conspiracy theories. None of this has the potential to challenge the ideology of the system on any real level. The only challenge represented by Trump ideologically and philosophically is that of an earlier iteration of the system. It’s quite telling that today instead of an eccentric media personality and ex-soldier with an interest in spirituality (Bannon), Trump is taking direction from futurists whose views are equally as eccentric.

Futurism is not only the perfect antidote to our current cultural malaise, but it also represents the absolute inversion of the Traditional worldview. In a civilization drowning in nihilistic hedonism and with a culture sunken into degeneracy of historically unprecedented depths, a movement that posits a hopeful vision for the future based around technological advancement and grand Faustian visions of space colonization, and collectively taking human evolution into our own hands, is a potent brew that may be intoxicating to the modern mindset, especially in our current position. Such projects, especially if they are marketed correctly, will inculcate into the people a sense of collective meaning and solidarity. Not only that, but futurism with its underlying assumptions of progress and materiality is the complete antithesis to a Traditional outlook and if one takes into account the potential for a new inverted spirituality (discussed in my previous article), one gets a view of a positive order that is the inverted reflection of the world of Tradition. At the time of writing, Trump has just released a video outlining a techno-futurist vision proposing ten brand-new futuristic cities and flying cars. Only time will tell if Trump’s futurist coalition will have the opportunity to put it into action and my guess is he will. It’s time for the next phase of the cycle.