Fusionism's Fate and the Managerial Regime
Assume the real enemy is the managerial regime. Whether that regime strengthens or collapses, the Grey Tribe will soon have to choose its friends and foes.
For moral and spiritual perfection can only be pursued by finite men through a series of choices, in which every moment is a new beginning; and freedom which makes those choices possible is itself a condition without which the moral and spiritual ends would be meaningless. If this were not so, if such ends could be achieved without the continuing exercise of freedom, then moral and spiritual perfection could be taught by rote and enforced by discipline — and every man of good will would be a saint. Freedom is therefore an integral aspect of the highest end.
—Frank Meyer
I recently gave Christopher Rufo what for. Many readers gave it right back to me, as they should. We go back and forth sometimes because we can handle it. I will always bow after sparring. I hope they will, too. But lemme offer a recap of those two pieces to discuss the future of what is known as “fusionism.”
In Part One, I accused Rufo of being a Boy Pharaoh who craves power at the expense of principle. He seems to think the plan should be for everyone on the Not-left to line up behind Team Red and lock in aggressive partisan warfare to seize power. But what then, I asked, and to what end?
In Part Two, I argued that Rufo lacks Sun Tsu-style maneuvering and stratagems by going all-in on politics, policy, and punditry. I wrote that he also fails to see a bigger, shadowier enemy than “the left,” a creature that long ago slinked from the coital bed of Mommy Money and Papa Power. Call it the managerial regime, following N.S. Lyons.
Seeing Gray
, the pseudonymous author of The Upheaval, has a more formidable mind than Rufo’s. Yet Lyons positions himself as the Boy Pharaoh’s complementary, playing the role of a Reactionary Pillar-Saint. In a recent piece, Lyons calls the Gray Tribe “Right-Wing Progressives” or RWPs, which he views as sort of a bastardized or mutant libertarian—a Silicon Valley Whig. I have a trout’s worth of bones to pick with his characterizations, but those will have to wait. He writes:
As for today’s conservatives and authentic reactionaries, they should be clear-eyed about the realities of their similarities and differences with Right-Wing Progressives. In the face of unrelenting assault by the managerial regime and the political left, now is hardly the time for breaking up with friends and allies.
In short, where Rufo wants to scapegoat libertarians for conservatives' failures, Lyons argues: Let’s retain fusionism for now.
Still, we should be able to recognize the RWPs for what they are – or at least are not. No matter how vocally anti-Woke they are, or how much they are rightly celebrated for the great deal they’ve already contributed to the fight for free speech and to the “heterodox” corners of the internet, RWPs are not the least bit conservative or reactionary and do not share the same fundamental interests as those who are. At some point, if the immediate war is largely won, these camps that were once on the same side are likely to find themselves starkly at odds over where to go next.
Passing over the problematic claim that the Gray Tribe is “not the least bit conservative,” and the corollary that we espouse progress ueber alles, Lyons claims this, our ragtag band of techno-Whigs, will have the upper hand:
Unfortunately for us, I think that whenever such a time for choosing arrives, it is the RWPs who will initially have a real advantage in momentum and popularity, at least here in the United States. That’s because the story of America is in part essentially one of the long-running triumph of the Faustian spirit of techno-optimistic dynamism over every competitor so far, for better and worse. Why exactly that’s the case is a topic to explore in more detail another time, but for now I’d just say: watch for the continued rise of today’s Right-Wing Progressives; they’re likely only just getting started.
I feel somehow seen, respected, and misunderstood all at once.
But the Lyonses of the world must understand that the Gray Tribe—at least the best of us—does not define itself in terms of polarities but rather integrations. We have become YES-AND beings who transcend and include the vital values of conservatism, whiggism, and yes, even progressivism. How’s that for fusionism? We are creating a new way of seeing and being that treats the best of these as a triadic integration that balances our roots in each with a healthy unity fit for a New America. But we also know that will probably involve making more elbow room for experimentation, that is, decentralization—or at least renewed federalism.
Understanding Underthrow
We don’t worship technology as a God or see the Technium as a replacement religion for social justice fundamentalism. We see innovation as far more promising than politics as a means to push back against—or circumvent—the managerial regime with its grotesque sino-forming.
No, we are not Lyons’s enemy. That is, unless, at some fundamental level, Lyons wants, like Rufo, to retake “the institutions” for Team Red and shove the One True Way down everyone’s throats.
Possible Worlds
My challenge to pure conservatives and reactionaries is this: There is no going back. In the sweet spot between Hegelian dialectics and Darwinian evolution, we will always evolve (or devolve) within a labyrinth of adjacent possibles. But that evolution can have directionality. For example, it can and should be animated by virtue, and we should be equipped with proverbial pens and swords to combat vice. But, with a nod to Frank Meyer, virtue is a free practice.
The possible worlds we explore here at Underthrow are not impossible to instantiate. And they are far preferable to complete totalitarian power or chaotic, fractured warlordism. The Burkean in me understands the need for marginal reforms, but the Jeffersonian in me knows that a moribund people living in a crumbling empire require heroic people to carry out heroic measures. Such includes technological means wielded by rebel forces building the counterculture and countereconomy.
From reading up to this point, one might assume I’m writing before some great collapse. That’s because I am. It’s difficult to deny—amid this apparent centralization and sino-forming—that we are already collapsing. This has been a slow process but is likely soon to accelerate. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the managerial regime will strengthen despite all the visible cracks. Either way, we will soon enter the phase where soft people succumb or harden.
After the fall comes the interregnum—that state of liminality in which the rest of the people wake up, but it’s too late. During the interregnum, those who make up that human system become conscious of its collapse.
There, we’ll have to decide whether the Rufos and Lyonses are friends or foes.