Once, at a lecture about criminal mindset a story was relayed by the presenter about how a sociopath described his world view and how he viewed other people. To the best of my memory the analogy was as follows
“Imagine you are the only human trapped on a planet full of cows. At first these cows don’t really bother you. But over time being the only human on a planet of cows starts to get at you. You begin to see the cows more and more harshly and your disdain develops. They were never other humans, you are the only human. They are just cattle and what you do to them is increasingly inconsequential.”
This insight was a fascinating one to me at the time. The general level of disdain this individual is describing goes above and beyond. He looks upon his fellow man as a separate species, a docile one. No doubt many now will leap to the same conclusion: this must be how the ‘elites’ view us!
Part of me is ashamed to admit it but I share some of that sentiment. I look around at the bloated overweight masses and view them as cattle. They are ugly, stupid, and irritating. On a daily basis I wonder how some of them manage to navigate the complexities of real life. Gurdjieff thought that most humans live in a kind of waking sleep, that very few could ever actually wake up and live meaningful lives. Countless other esoteric thinkers, some wildly popular like Evola, also think of the masses in a similar way. Castes are real for them and the unwashed masses are not to be celebrated.
Are the evil elites so many rally against actually not pre-disposed to a similar ideas? They hold power and think of the masses as the little people. The conspiracy crowd love to talk about how the elites are evil for their plans to depopulate the world or keep more people from eating meat. Really it isn’t that far removed from Evolian notions of hierarchy, some people are truly unworthy.
The middle classes and lower classes have never had it so good. A McDonalds burger is a luxury from ages passed that our poor gobble up and become shuffling obese blobs of mass. Do you not hold a level of disdain for them? On what basis are they deserving of such luxury or equality? Are you now telling me that the flourishing of the human spirit requires equity so that the middle class of today can continue their holidays abroad and meat consumption. Perhaps the climate change alarm is embraced by those who know they should not be eating as much meat or traveling because they are in fact unworthy. Could it be that our elites, far from evil, are instead encouraging a natural return to hierarchy?
Air Travel is a great example of this. In the early years air travel was exotic, expensive, the preserve of the wealthy who had need to travel and the ability to travel. The images from this golden age are strikingly different from the cattle class experience we have today. Today air travel is dehumanizing, monotonous and the people aboard barely glance out the window to marvel at the powers of flight. More people could travel and the standards lowered and now it is just all of us in the muck together, what was once glorious and exotic and special, perhaps even beautiful is reduced by the access of the masses.
European cities now are also reduced to tourist fodder. Once great places with their own identity are now hollow tourist traps. Venice, Barcelona, London. All of them over saturated with tourists gawking and thus the creation of a servile service based tourist economy is ensured. We arrive at the commonality of “loves to travel” as some kind of hobby and surrogate interest. ‘Travel’ used to be a difficult proposition, undertaken either by the wealthy for fun, the middle merchant classes as necessity for business, or by the poorest because they had to follow the work. As leisure time expanded so too did the opportunities for travel. Indeed we live in a weird egalitarian time where almost every form of travel is reduced to a form of blandness.
Returning to flying we see that - where once we had First, Business, and Coach until recently most airlines ended up with ‘Business and Economy’. Now all of a sudden they have realized there is a gap and we’re seeing ‘Premium Economy’ appear as a gap between Business and Economy. You get much nicer seats and better food than economy but you don’t get quite the luxury of Business - and of course a few airlines still retain ‘First’ class for the upper elite who are just unable to quite get into private jet travel. Trains are even worse than planes, First is basically just now a ‘pay for quiet’ zone but the seats and design is lackluster. You’re no worse off in ‘Standard’. In the egalitarian drive what has truly been wiped out is in fact the middle rung - this feels almost symbolic as in the real world the High-Low alliance against the middle tends to dominate as well.
The real horseshoe theory though is an odd one. If we take the Qanon/WEF types accusations as true - that the global elite want to depopulate the earth akin to the plot of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six because the masses are disdainful then we see a real overlap. The masses are disdainful - certainly the hordes that invade our countries are but so too are the drones programmed to support them. Useful idiots. It is hard to aspire towards ethno-nationalist sentiment in times like this. Covid itself did a real number on that feeling - strong government driven by school-marms and hypochondriacs of a sickly weak population was hellish. At what point was loyalty to your people rewarded in such a time, they embraced locking each other up in their houses as happily as they embrace everything else ostensibly bad for them (mass migration and ethnic dispossession).
There is only one way out I see. Reducing your circle of care to the immediately aligned. Becoming more ideological to an extent, or perhaps clannish. The ethno-nationalist stands to end up as todays civic nationalist. Fighting a hopeless battle against forces of egalitarian entropy. Pour wasted energy into a cause and see where it gets you. A level of disdain is perhaps actually healthy, a desire to return to a more hierarchical society and structure is what we call for. What you see around you is the fruits of pretending everyone is equal - the harsh part of this is to look in the mirror.
I’ll close this out with an interesting study from the former USSR.
TL;DR: The Communists persecuted intellectuals, but the intellectuals persisted. The areas the Soviets sent those "Enemies of the People" to are more successful today, with higher GDPs, more profitable firms, and greater average wages.
The study also found that the descendants of "Enemies of the People" are better off today, despite their grandparents having everything taken from them by the Communists.
During their lifetimes, "Enemies of the People" faced persecution and prejudice. The Communists were able to steal people's land, possessions, families, and rights, but those people were still able to pass on their brilliance. Today, that still makes all the difference.
We are facing persecution currently - if you survive it is because you are meant to. You are able to thrive - our enemies pile on the pressure and in the Soviet Union that pressure was even more intense. Yet still those people, the innately smart, those who were better have managed to thrive and even their descendants thrive.
That is the truth of inequality. That even when the Communists took everything from those people their descendants are still better off today. The future is to some extent already written.
Let's be honest, most Americans are cretins. I should know, I am American.
Another thing ethnonationalists miss is that often, when their countries were at the peak of their power, there were extraordinary class prejudices in society. Those elites were very insulated and out of touch as well, but it was the governing class' ideology and culture that helped them raise the state instead of tear it down.
One hundred years ago, the stodgy Tory MP may have been opposed to unions and minimum wage, but he had lost a son at the Somme. Now, the same Tory MP is still anti union but his son is in Ibiza.