Thomas Mann wrote on the allure of force to fascists:
fascism [] has deep and perhaps indestructible roots in human nature; for its essence is force .... [Force] can accomplish everything, or practically everything. Once it has subjugated the body through fear, it can even subjugate thought. For man in the long run cannot live a double life in order to live in harmony with himself, he adapts his thoughts to the manner of life that force imposes upon him. All this force can accomplish.1
But, he also observed a competing aspect of human experience:
The idea is a specific and essential attribute of man, that which makes him human. It is within him a real and natural fact, so impossible of neglect that those who do not respect human nature’s participation in the ideal—as force certainly does not—commit the clumsiest and, in the long run, the most disastrous mistakes.2
The deliberative fascist project we are facing now is not yet as elementally “forceful” as the mid-century fascist movements. Indeed there is rudimentary “participation in the ideal” (which we here take to mean, without loss of Mann’s intent, higher grades of actuality above the obviously material); the problem now is subtler, lying in particular in the degree of “respect” for “human nature’s participation” in the ideal. The twentieth-century dispute was more obvious: the level of “respect,” as Mann suggests, was at or near zero in favor of the human faculty of “force.” In our current period, we are dealing not with the specter of “force” but with that of advantage. Advantage is a shade more abstract and requires a slightly higher order of ability compared to the exertion of mere “force,” but it remains at the animal level and below the highest abilities exclusively accessible to humans—such as reasoning. Our military victory in the Second World War met force with force but failed to solve the problem of humanity’s degeneration to reliance on force itself either by way of the actualization of it or by way of the threat of the actualization of it by those with dominative advantage, and the problem has returned having learned to wear a suit.3
Far from creating a new-and-improved, less-impulsive form of fascism as some hoped, shifting to a frame of advantage instead of overt force does nothing to redeem the ideology. Advantage held by one person is necessarily contingent upon the disadvantage of one or more others. And, unlike those who can traffic in more sophisticated conceptual entities, purist advantage-seekers have no compensatory facility with the “complex of an indivisible kind, freighted with spirituality and elementary dynamic force”4 which exists among conceptual entities such as “truth,” “freedom,” and “justice”: that is, the realms approaching the “absolute.”5
Advantage is a shade more abstract and requires a slightly higher order of ability compared to the exertion of mere “force,” but it remains at the animal level and below the highest abilities exclusively accessible to humans—such as reasoning.
More concretely, the new fascist interpretive system is built explicitly upon a single relation between two members: “has advantage over,” as in “x has advantage over y.” Game theory and its pursuit of game-theoretic “rationality”—that is, of optimality of advantage—may therefore be seen as a calculus of advantage and, in this light, is a rather obviously inadequate system by which to model all of human society. At best, a higher order of thinking is required to wield game-theoretic concerns for the purpose of universally6 containing the various instabilities that arise from excessive pursuits of advantage toward equilibrium; by extent, the Hayekian denialism of higher orders, of course, makes this an impossibility, leaving a naïve pursuit of advantage to be the “natural law” of the land. The actually-natural rule of the jungle—which is to say that which is concealed behind Hobbes’ “civil law”—must eventually follow, especially if these pseudo-intellectal trends in thought are to become a truly-global orthodoxy.
The Italian fascist Julius Evola, whose work is resurgent in Silicon Valley and other far-right circles,7 provides a clear description of how an advantage-based society that denies subtler conceptual entities is highly compatible with aristocracy. As he writes:
The Gospel principle of returning good for evil is not for aristocrats: they may pardon and be generous, but only to a vanquished enemy, not to one still standing in all the force of his injustice. Nor is love an aristocratic principle, in the sense of a need to embrace, commune with, and take care of those who may not even want or deserve it. Relations between aristocratic equals have nothing communistic or fraternal about them: they are facts of loyalty, recognition, mutual respect, with each keeping his own dignity distinct. For this reason there is nothing in the hierarchy of the [aristocratic] warrior caste8 resembling a “mystic” bond, an incorporeal and impersonal dependency.9
We may take the current manifestation of the fascist problem to be a type of aristocracy rebranded in the language of mathematics that flirts with overt force via technology, but generally is more deliberative than the previous iteration. From this lens, is Mann’s observation that, “in the long run, the most disastrous mistakes” will necessarily occur still guaranteed? We see that they no longer “commit the clumsiest” errors as, indeed, they have advanced to the point of capturing the United States federal government and threatening all democracies globally. We must first understand that each action they take is because it follows from an advantageous strategy, i.e. that all judgments and commitments stem from not only material gain but from material advantage; the former facilitating the latter rather than being only an end itself.
Now comes the critical question: is an advantageous strategy necessarily a winning strategy? To answer this, we note two considerations. The first is that the pursuit of an unchecked naïve advantage must lead to an unstable Silicon Valley-style boom-and-bust cycle across all of society that itself is easy to game by those with advantage,10 indicating an unstable and tiresome system that quickly spins out to the failure state of oligarchy. The second is that from advantage comes a kind of egoic, manic ambition, a uniquely-human attribute which would be a key characteristic motivating those seeking a Kulturmission or, grander still, an “ecumenical” ideological project. More specifically, an egoically-ambitious strategy could be said to be a peculiarly advantage-maximizing one that addicts the individual who has adopted it in two easily-measurable ways: first by the degree of advantage held over others, second by the total number of people over which advantage is had. A cancer-like solipsistic game with no end, exit, or proper contextualization, the strategy eventually destroys itself, is destroyed by the healthy, or destroys that which sustains it—thereby destroying itself and everything else. These are the three outcomes available to us now that we find ourselves in this situation. Interestingly, given the addictive quality of the ideology, whether the new fascists have chosen a winning strategy is out of their control.
Each action they take is because it follows from an advantageous strategy, i.e. that all judgments and commitments stem from not only material gain but from material advantage; the former facilitating the latter rather than being only an end itself.
The ambitious should not be congratulated for not falling back to a violent strategy because what they are doing is worthy of no particular respect, and yet worship of and deference to the game-theoretically “rational,” nevertheless, is common in our society. The “rationally” ambitious simply have slightly greater mental faculty compared to their predecessors such that they do not immediately reach for violence, but, were they in a disadvantageous position, they may very well appeal to it just the same. In fact, where the merely violent seek to “subjugate[] the body through fear” and, from there, “even subjugate thought,”11 the ambitious, capable of the slightly-more abstract, seek, as Theory of Games “teaches,” to “convinc[e] [] the interested parties [based] upon the physical facts of the situation—in the terminology of games, on the rules of the game.”12 The ambitious have advanced only insofar as they merely continually threaten and imply violence rather than overtly wield it, and thus their “subjugat[ion]” is conducted by means of inference, a kind of special language of savviness among the “rational” actors (which, it must be noted, allows them to make special deals among themselves particularly benefitting their individual persons as this, too, is “rational”; this being one means by which a special “classification” among humans may be bestowed towards the goal of imposing hierarchy). The violent and the naïvely ambitious ultimately share the same underlying motive, and in fact the same “terminus technicus”13 may be used: domination.14
Needless to say, the modal shifting among various means of “subjugat[ion]” is hardly an advance in civilization: rather, it is a mere detente, at best a means by which an aristocratic coalition may form to exert domination over everyone else in a partitioned fashion. The mid-century conflict, then, was hardly resolved. Ferdinand Foch, commander of all allied forces during WWI, had reportedly stated that the Treaty of Versailles “is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years.” Similarly, the Treaty of Game Theory could be seen as an armistice formulated by the “brain trusters,” eventually allowing for the recurrence of fascism by any or all of the theory’s shortcomings, of the theory’s underexamined precepts, or of explicit design; its eighty-year lifespan accounted for by the slightly-more abstract mechanisms at play. The apparent entente is over: the threat of the use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict empirically shows that even the doctrine of mutually-assured destruction is failing (or, more cynically, has served its purpose: the USSR adopting the doctrine could also be seen as a significant advancement of an “ecumenical”-scale Kulturmission).15
Now comes the critical question: is an advantageous strategy necessarily a winning strategy?
To the new-form ambitious fascist, then, “respect [for] human nature’s participation in the ideal” is at best middling; thus, to them, having “respect” for subtler forms of the “ideal”—such as wisdom, intellectual honesty, or a great many other elements present in or consequent of the higher grades of thought—would result in a disadvantageous strategy since their proper adoption would naturally delimit material gain and material advantage. And from this, we can explain much: for example, the little-publicized rule among the securely positioned, “Don’t move unless you have to,” is simply that the advantage is already had by the accumulation of excess resources, thus the change occurs from making decisions which maximize advantage to making decisions which minimize the risk of disadvantage and loss.16
Now, critically, this particular behavior, this act of stillness, may appear to the untrained eye as strikingly similar to that borne out of intelligence, but we must not mistake one for the other: judgment is the product of intelligence, whereas mere decision is the product of calculation;17 the actually intelligent are purposeful in action in all cases, whereas the advantage oriented are only cautious in action when advantage is already achieved and secured.18 Many have come to believe that elites are necessarily intelligent and are necessarily imbued with good judgment, but anyone who has met the full brat pack of any elite parent would find among them a disparity of intelligence no different than would be found anywhere else. From such an observation, one may immediately understand that there is absolutely nothing biologically inherent to their success; rather, what distinguishes them from any other family are the commonalities of composure, calm, and other surficial appearances of what many assume follow from intelligence.
Niebuhr, in fact, shows that European languages going back to Ancient Greek possess an “aristocratic confusion of manners and morals”19 where a single term, such as “gentleman” or “nobleman,” connotes a panoply of positive characteristics possessed by such a person, e.g. that they are simultaneously or interchangeably “well-born,” “well-mannered,” “virtuous,” and “considerate.” Mere adherence to manners, it must be emphasized, is in no way a sign of possession of intelligence or of morals but rather is a signifier that one knows how to adhere to “the rules of the game”; that is, the facility for advantage must be held to be conceptually distinct from the rest of a person’s abilities to be able to truly evaluate the quality of a person, otherwise intellect, morality, manners, aristocracy, ambition, and advantage-seeking are gummed together into a confusing bundle.
Judgment is the product of intelligence, whereas mere decision is the product of calculation; the actually intelligent are purposeful in action in all cases, whereas the advantage oriented are only cautious in action when advantage is already achieved and secured.
Coming back to Evola, he explicitly appeals to surficial appearance when he states that the “ideal aristocrat or gentleman” possesses “composure and conscious equilibrium that is both ‘style’ and ‘rule’.” Even more, he believes that this “style” “is also found in the description of figures like the Greek sage, the Buddhist ascetic, or the Perfect Man of the Far East.”20
That is, to the Evolans, the aristocrats not only possess the attributes of the warrior, but they also have those of the religious adherent and the great thinkers among the Ancient Greeks; is there anything the aristo can’t do? An egomaniacal ideology indeed!
The would-be aristocrats, perhaps, are the most confused of all since they have satisfied all the aching of their lower faculties, and yet all is hardly well in the world; the world, strangely, does not celebrate them at all. Let us now settle the matter. There is no “natural aristocracy,” and one never has, and never shall, exist: there is mere collusion among those who are well mannered, that is, those who know and gain from following “the rules of the game”; and the fact that most are mere participants in a game not of their own design pointedly suggests, for them, that there is not much to remark upon within their persons since, in the end, their “success” is fully contingent upon a particular ideological project whose fullest implications they likely do not understand, a project which they may not even be aware of at all.
Modern American elites, being commonly confused as possessing intelligence—or alternatively as possessing a notable “will”—have been rather exclusively granted the luxuries normally afforded to the actually intellectual (an even worse sin given that all persons should be given the same opportunities). With the continual erosion of an actual intellectual elite and the morally minded—such as has been facilitated by certain universities’ administrators—it is only the aristocratic elite, and they alone, who are now allowed to think, to strategize, to reflect, to watch, and to wait, all due to some “ineffable” quality they claim to possess (that is: sufficient financial independence and/or a willingness to serve various agendas towards the destruction not just of academia but of democracy itself). Everyone else—all the workers who carry out their orders and tasks, i.e. those whom the elite “brain” coordinates as a remote “body”21—must never pause as this is perceived as malfeasance or laziness; meaningless edicts from on high, such as “It’s Time to Build,” are issued, often to distract the populace from the undeniable problems our advantage-based22 system of organization manifesting in all corners. The acts of stillness—which also includes idleness, as Russell himself identifies23—are no longer affordances toward the betterment of society but are now undeservedly reserved for the elite and fetishized by everyone due to their artificially-created scarcity.
There is no “natural aristocracy,” and one never has, and never shall, exist: there is mere collusion among those who are well mannered, that is, those who know and gain from following “the rules of the game.”
Thus, the elite maintain an aura of superiority—that is, more “objectively” speaking, of being the exclusive beneficiaries of a supposedly-dominative solution—via possession of mere advantage and the comfort it provides, and from there they continually extend their trick to claim more and more authority where, in most cases, even an ounce of power vested in them was already an ounce too much. The new union of simple hedonistic, power-hungry elites and the more ideologically-charged fascists was sealed by a mutual commitment to advantage calculations as the means of organizing civilization.
As a sign of the near-elimination of an actual intelligentsia, the logical conclusion of this “terminus technicus” has perhaps come in the form of the man-child who has named his son “Techno Mechanicus”: Elon Musk. Given Elon’s particular interest in Mars, the name may be a reference to the miniature wargame Warhammer 40K which, according to its Fandom Wiki, has the “Adeptus Mechanicus,” i.e. the “Cult of the Machine based on Mars which provides the [galaxy-wide] Imperium with its scientists, engineers, and technicians.”24 “The tech-adepts of the Mechanicus,” the wiki goes on to state, “are the primary keepers of what is viewed as sacred wisdom, a privileged caste of Tech-priests who jealously guard the knowledge required to maintain and construct much of the Imperium’s advanced technology.” The lore goes on: “The religion Cult Mechanicus values knowledge and the technology it creates above all else and views the final embrace of technology in the form of a purely mechanical existence as the ultimate destiny for Mankind’s evolution.”25 Warhammer fans have noticed the comparison themselves; though, even if it is pure coincidence, that itself points to the utter nonsense that spews forth from our dear leaders. Names, plans, projects that first and foremost appear to the untrained eye as strikingly similar to those borne out of intelligence but, in actuality, originate from variations of mere “positive thinking” at best; and at worst, from a computer via AI slop or, given that our rulers’ “thinking” is closer to AI system than many may care to admit, from an actual human mind that can only produce a slop-like discharge.26
The new union of simple hedonistic, power-hungry elites and the more ideologically-charged fascists was sealed by a mutual commitment to advantage calculations as the means of organizing civilization.
According to our new rulers, all is fair in Lovecraft and Warhammer: “Turn[ing] the White House Lawn into a Tesla Showroom,” apartheid, Sieg Heils from behind the Presidential Seal, buying (or even possibly rigging) elections, destroying democracy, dismantling the international order, not to mention all manner of wackadoodle beliefs and ideologies such as the summoning of “xenodemons” and “egregores” into your pocket calculator. None of it needs to make sense: the aristocrat is exempted from such outmoded concerns.
It seems that an integral part of Too Big To Fail 2.0 is Grift 2.0: where the scams of old were conducted by knowing confidence men upon sucker victims, in the age of information the fraudsters themselves are now at least as confused as their marks, and what they sell are not even dreams anymore but bare delusions. Now that Mars and beyond are incessantly promised, the sky is no longer the limit: all that is required is becoming detached from reality.