James Kirkpatrick writes: Can a movement win if it has the right tactics but the wrong target? The story of the American Conservative Movement after the Cold War suggests that it can’t. The American Right has chased tangential issues, acted as controlled opposition, and operated more like a business than a serious movement, partially because it didn’t know what it was fighting. Conservative radio host Jesse Kelly [Tweet him] deserves credit for trying to point to a real target, suggesting some productive means to fight the enemy, and having a clear view of the stakes. Unfortunately, he may be wrong about who it is that really threatens America and what they really want. America is being torn about by tribes who fundamentally aren’t part of the country and never want to be, not simply people who want a different economic system. As Paul Gottfried might put it, we aren’t threatened by “Communists,” because we are actually facing people to the left of them.
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Still, Kelly deserves credit for rejecting the complacency and triumphalism in American political thought. “I wish I could tell you that our nation stands at a crossroad…” he says in his June 2023 best-seller The Anti-Communist Manifesto. “But that’s not the case. America chose a path long ago. Now we stand within sight of the journey’s dark end.”
Paul Kersey and I discuss this important book in the last VDARE Book Club podcast of 2023!
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