Whither the New New Right

We go deeper into questions about the counter-march through the institutions. The magnificent Jim Rutt hosts.

WWGD? : What would Gramsci do?

The future we face at the dawn of the twenty-first century is, like all futures left to themselves, “emergent, complex messiness.” Its “messiness” lies not in disorder, but in an order that is unpredictable, spontaneous, and ever shifting, a pattern created by millions of uncoordinated, independent decisions.
—Virginia Postrel

Jim Rutt is a brilliant, belligerent old bastard. So I’m proud to know him. When it comes to vexing questions about the tension between human progress and existential risk, Jim is one of the founders of “Game B,” which is both a mode of thinking and a proto movement. Yet he’s also the sort of SOB that, if he hears the word “metaphysics,” will reach for his pistol.

In this episode of the Jim Rutt Show, Jim and I discuss the Rufo the Reactionary series (One and Two). Jim admires the efficacy of Rufo as a “field general” in the counter-march through the institutions, but he shares my concerns about what Rufo will do once he crosses the Rubicon. Jim plays Rufo’s role in a dialogical style, letting me respond in kind, though occasionally editorializing or playing the Devil’s advocate.

Spoiler Alert: The terrible and tempting thing about Rufo is that he is an avatar of the Reactionary Right. While one can’t help but watch with Schadenfreude as he chalks up Ws in the War against Woke, one senses that Rufo is Centralist with a different color “velvet glove.” That makes him a mirror of the authoritarian Left in that both want forced stasis. Neither is comfortable with a future that unfolds from what they can’t design or control.

What do such assessments mean for temporary alliances with this juggernaut that is the populist Right? And what is the New Right? The New New Right? Jim and I struggle with such questions.

When Virginia Postrel wrote The Future and Its Enemies, she was prescient. She drew the distinction between the Dynamists and the Stasists, a distinction I find is much more meaningful than well-worn terms such as Left and Right. While Jim Rutt and I don’t always agree on the particulars, you can see that we’re both Dynamists—perhaps American Whigs in that we share that Jeffersonian genealogy and optimism about technology as a force for good.

And I, of course, am comfortable donning a Gray Robe.

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