I have a friend like this. It stopped being worth talking because she would just say oh that never happened or that was staged. She is kinda like a seer. Which gets old.
OVER NOTICING is a huge issue. The very thing that helps people on the Right have a sense of realizing they were lied to is stimulated non-stop by the content creators and a few thousand terminally online boomers on YouTube that share it all to their Facebook groups that have 450,000 members each.
Once a 52 or 70 year old joins that, they're lightly sucked in to that side.
The 45 and under are who we probably see more daily, but they're all having the same problem.
Once you "NOTICE" and feel your 2004 Republican mainline beliefs made you lose the USA as it was... it's difficult to stop NOTICING. The non-stop circle of perpetuating it in feeds keeps it going all over.
Many of these people Keith dismissively refers to as "rightoids" correctly smell a rat but haven't done the work of tracing the rat to its nest. They are not "natural cranks" but people who know something is wrong but don't understand precisely what. So they latch onto simplistic or false explanations in lieu of accurate ones.
The proper response to such people is to provide a more adequate explanation, not ridicule and dismiss them out of hand. Don't tell them "Move on, nothing to see here" the way establishment media and experts do; say instead something along the lines of "You are not entirely wrong but what really happened here is ______, not _______ as you suppose." [fill in the blanks as appropriate]
The "rightoids" are not wrong in attributing many contemporary and historical nefarious doings to an unspecified "they." In many such instances, there will indeed be a small, influential minority of the population responsible for the events in question. But anyone using the term "they" owes us an explanation of who "they" are. The problem is that this question does not usually have a simple answer. When they become more specific, "rightoids" will offer simplistic answers like "the Rothschilds." They are mistaken here, not in realizing that there are Rothschilds who are indeed up to no good, but in giving far too much weight to the role of the Rothschild family when there are far, far more elites shaping events than just the Rothschilds.
Rather than bemoan the "rightoids," at least be glad that they are no longer mainstream conservatives blindly trusting the authorities of the current system. Anyone who implicitly trusts today's authorities is a credulous fool.
Rather than wasting time creating psychological typologies to pigeon hole potential supporters of nationalist movements in, more useful intellectual exercises for nationalist thinkers to engage in would be providing more adequate analyses of power (e.g. using social network theory), cogent economic analyses, and most usefully of all, outlines of the social, political and economic policies which a future nationalist government might institute.
"Rather than wasting time creating psychological typologies to pigeon hole potential supporters of nationalist movements in, more useful intellectual exercises for nationalist thinkers to engage in would be providing more adequate analyses of power (e.g. using social network theory), cogent economic analyses, and most usefully of all, outlines of the social, political and economic policies which a future nationalist government might institute."
I have written about 200,000 words on this Substack doing that, all of it free to access. It's also important to understand the psychological makeup of people on our side. I don't see how it's pigeon holing anyone to describe these tendencies, is anyone going to become more set on being a crank if they read this?
"I have written about 200,000 words on this Substack doing that"
I've read a number of your articles, some of them very good. That's why I'm here.
"is anyone going to become more set on being a crank if they read this?"
Again, I think this glib characterization of lots of people leaning in our direction as being "cranks" is unfair, unhelpful and rather snobbish.
I am very skeptical of theories purporting to explain people's opinions by psychoanalyzing them. There was a genre of biography in vogue in the 1960s and 1970s which took this line using Freudian (pseudo-)psychology. I used to refer to it as "character assassination by psychobabble."
I doubt that the majority of the people you dismiss as rightoid cranks possess some presumably innate psychological character flaw which is responsible for their opinions.
A more plausible explanation for the mistaken and even ridiculous beliefs of "rightoids" is that they have throughout their lives been subjected to schools, media and various authorities lying to them, browbeating them, leading them astray and attempting to manipulate their attitudes and beliefs, often in sophisticated ways. At the same time, there has been a marked paucity of honest educators, journalists, authorities and public intellectuals speaking truth to them. Such voices have long been suppressed so that few hear them.
Is it any wonder then that so many people are clueless and end up believing some dumb things in their cursory, crude, untutored attempts at understanding the world?
BTW there are sound scientific reasons to reject both pasteurization and vaccination.
Pasteurization destroys some nutrients and natural anti-microbial factors in milk. Unpasteurized milk will last longer than pasteurized milk without spoiling.
Vaccination has caused and continues to cause immense damage to health, especially now when dozens of vaccines are routinely administered to newborns. This is institutionalized malpractice.
The natural unmanipulated immune system will provide superior protection against pathogens than vaccines so long as people are well-nourished and healthy. If we really cared about people's health, a far more efficient public health policy than pushing vaccination would aim at providing reasonably priced, nutrient dense, organically raised, whole foods to as many people as possible. This is a good example of the sort of policy a nationalist government should pursue.
Rejecting vaccines as unnecessary and harmful is not an a priori "romantic primitivist" judgment based on the syllogism "vaccines are artificial therefore they are bad." It's an empirical judgment based on intuitive good sense and the personal experience of many people backed up by a growing body of empirical biomedical research. The medical establishment refuses to carry out such research and attempts to suppress such research which gets done anyway due to a minority of courageous honest researchers carrying on despite the prevailing institutional bias in favor of vaccination. There is excellent reason to distrust today's medical establishment.
The “primitives” conjecture that if THEY lied to us about the elections, 20th century history, the COVID threat, 9/11 etc … then maybe they were lied to about other things as well.
This used to be called “pattern recognition” and a sign of high IQ. Perhaps even a belated recognition of personal responsibility to investigate for oneself the claims of the authorities instead of blindly believing.
Apparently, this is a bad thing now and worthy of derision. We are only allowed to disbelieve and question what our alt media influencers tell us to.
It has to be taken for granted that most people believe some very silly things and everybody will get at least some things badly wrong. After all, a huge amount of effort has been put into sowing confusion and false beliefs among the masses.
The whole point of being a useful online commenter is that you have figured out some things at least and therefore can try to spread your understanding to those who read your content. Kvetching about all the nonsensical beliefs which indeed are to be found in abundance is not helpful. Just say what you believe to be true and your reasons for this belief in plain language.
Rightoids are fun though. Lefties are mechanical and robotic.
To be fair, there is reason to doubt many things, 9/11, the American assassinations over the years. Even Chem trails are now being partially proven. But I do take the point that you cannot collapse into a total conspiracy mindset as it is both politically and personally unhealthy.
Lenin never did attract the majority of Marxists his entire career of debate and writing. Only when it looked like his new government will survive did he began to attract a massive audience, amid hundreds of different socialist and Marxists groups (one reason why the Russian Revolution was such a mess). His biggest advantage was a lack of doctrinal purity. He was willing to cut deals with the devil to secure his coup. What gets overlooked is his background as lower nobility with a middle class lifestyle. So, he was already used to taking command over his own family and to think in a truly political way, that is systemically, from a young age. How the Communists organized to punch far above their weight class holds much lessons for the nationalists today. There are many opinions on the right, many worthwhile, but they tends toward either/or. Worse, they are stuck in the 20th century mindset. The first question should be how to create a flourishing life within a flourishing society, not “is it capitalism” or “is it socialism”? Those are tools, not goals. Start with a simple vision and a goal, and judge the means by this light. That’s the first step toward creating a system of simple actions that anyone can perform even if you are a poor housewife with little time.
Liberals are good at hanging themselves. By exporting feminism, they are making the tide of color receding and making themselves barren, creating space for ourselves.
I recently asked a “rightoid” friend if he could name some elites on the right at the ready to take over once the liberals are routed. His list was very short.
They will appear. The left's greatest issue is the coalition of minorities that make up multiple nations inside the USA. While it still benefits to vote for D's, they elect their own to local and eventually federal offices as their closed off non white communities grow and strengthen.
I really think about 6-10 more years + an economic downturn just enough to really be an issue (we have gas it so good it will not take a total crash but it's hard to get there)
...and then my guess is a small borough, large neighborhood or two, or a small city somewhere will suddenly have some reason to tell the Federal Government "NO" in a Governor Wallace kind of way , if you get my drift.
But then what will that federal government do? Force the minorities that reject it's rule to comply?
And of course, 99% of us in the US won't live anywhere near it. But it will happen here and there. And I think that's where the dissolution and balkanization of stuff will start to break down and happen.
I don't know why I just rambled on about all that. I just got stuck on it and couldn't stop
Keith Woods is not a traditional Catholic. He is a false prophet—a modern‑day Simon Magus who uses the symbols of the Faith to advance a political project that is fundamentally pagan. His "traditionalism" is a mask for ethnolatry—the worship of the tribe, the deification of the ancestor, the sacralization of the genome. This is the same error that the prophets of Israel condemned. It is the same error that Saint Paul condemned.
The leftoid has more trust, and less ego involved in placing their faith in the reasoning of their elites. The rightoid trusts no one, and earnestly believes only he or she can know the answer to every single plight and topic occurring. It’s truly pathetic.
The right-wingers that do tend to lead parties or even states today are also people often not worth trusting or following. Compare that to titans like Jean-Marie Le Pen or even Jörg Haider who actually knew what they were doing.
I agree and I'm not denying agency. Like I said in the article, the problem isn't that they believe conspiracies but that they assume them. Agency is sometimes but not always an explanation.
Thanks for clarifying, Keith. I appreciate your scholarly approach and hope you can resist becoming jaded as the “masses” wake up. I am often frustrated as I imagine you are on a daily basis as one of our original deep thinkers.
I think the problem is less how “rightoids” think and is more a problem of entertainment. You included this with your comment about amoral showman types in this article. Josh Neal wrote about this too in his book on conspiracy theories. Morgoth touched on it in one of his recent essays too. There seems to be a desire for ever more “forbidden knowledge”. Understanding Zionism, JQ more broadly, role of secret societies, elite theory, ruthlessness of great power politics, etc isn’t enough. Has to be aliens, demons, chemtrails, flat-earth-moon-landing denier conspiritardism.
There were 33 comments, so I *had* to make a 34th to dispel bad orgone energy... Jokes aside, I come from this 'conspiracy' space. The 'David Icke to EtNationalist pipeline is one less traveled, but it exists. I have some friends like what the commenter Pius describes, and so we have to simply agree to disagree sometimes.
One tiny nitpick: I seem to recall you sharing a graph on Telegram, numerating references to 'racism/racist' in US newspapers pre and post Occupy Wall Str (references in major newspapers went up many orders of magnitude). I am very possibly mistaken. Or maybe you forwarded it from Joel Davis' nuked account. I'm not trying to 'do a gotcha' here, but I think it's a good example of 'them' distracting people. I will spare you, and keep this comment brief. Excellent essay; a hardy perennial.
Keith, why do I have the constant feeling politics is deep down about different understandings of masculinity? MAGA Shaman seems to about someone obsessed about maxing out masculinity in some very visceral way, that feels historic and timeless but is actually fake.
Woods is silent on this. He has aligned himself with the "Christian nationalism" of Nick Fuentes—a movement that, for all its rhetorical opposition to the "globalist" order, remains fundamentally pro‑capitalist, pro‑usury, and blind to the providential role of the BRICS nations in breaking the Ring of the dollar. His "traditionalism" is a dead end because it has no sword. It looks to build a "white ethno‑state" within the US borders, to withdraw from the world, and to wait for the collapse of the system. This is the passivity of the Protestant quietist, filtered through racial paranoia.
I have a friend like this. It stopped being worth talking because she would just say oh that never happened or that was staged. She is kinda like a seer. Which gets old.
OVER NOTICING is a huge issue. The very thing that helps people on the Right have a sense of realizing they were lied to is stimulated non-stop by the content creators and a few thousand terminally online boomers on YouTube that share it all to their Facebook groups that have 450,000 members each.
Once a 52 or 70 year old joins that, they're lightly sucked in to that side.
The 45 and under are who we probably see more daily, but they're all having the same problem.
Once you "NOTICE" and feel your 2004 Republican mainline beliefs made you lose the USA as it was... it's difficult to stop NOTICING. The non-stop circle of perpetuating it in feeds keeps it going all over.
A few words in defense of "rightoids":
Many of these people Keith dismissively refers to as "rightoids" correctly smell a rat but haven't done the work of tracing the rat to its nest. They are not "natural cranks" but people who know something is wrong but don't understand precisely what. So they latch onto simplistic or false explanations in lieu of accurate ones.
The proper response to such people is to provide a more adequate explanation, not ridicule and dismiss them out of hand. Don't tell them "Move on, nothing to see here" the way establishment media and experts do; say instead something along the lines of "You are not entirely wrong but what really happened here is ______, not _______ as you suppose." [fill in the blanks as appropriate]
The "rightoids" are not wrong in attributing many contemporary and historical nefarious doings to an unspecified "they." In many such instances, there will indeed be a small, influential minority of the population responsible for the events in question. But anyone using the term "they" owes us an explanation of who "they" are. The problem is that this question does not usually have a simple answer. When they become more specific, "rightoids" will offer simplistic answers like "the Rothschilds." They are mistaken here, not in realizing that there are Rothschilds who are indeed up to no good, but in giving far too much weight to the role of the Rothschild family when there are far, far more elites shaping events than just the Rothschilds.
Rather than bemoan the "rightoids," at least be glad that they are no longer mainstream conservatives blindly trusting the authorities of the current system. Anyone who implicitly trusts today's authorities is a credulous fool.
Rather than wasting time creating psychological typologies to pigeon hole potential supporters of nationalist movements in, more useful intellectual exercises for nationalist thinkers to engage in would be providing more adequate analyses of power (e.g. using social network theory), cogent economic analyses, and most usefully of all, outlines of the social, political and economic policies which a future nationalist government might institute.
"Rather than wasting time creating psychological typologies to pigeon hole potential supporters of nationalist movements in, more useful intellectual exercises for nationalist thinkers to engage in would be providing more adequate analyses of power (e.g. using social network theory), cogent economic analyses, and most usefully of all, outlines of the social, political and economic policies which a future nationalist government might institute."
I have written about 200,000 words on this Substack doing that, all of it free to access. It's also important to understand the psychological makeup of people on our side. I don't see how it's pigeon holing anyone to describe these tendencies, is anyone going to become more set on being a crank if they read this?
"I have written about 200,000 words on this Substack doing that"
I've read a number of your articles, some of them very good. That's why I'm here.
"is anyone going to become more set on being a crank if they read this?"
Again, I think this glib characterization of lots of people leaning in our direction as being "cranks" is unfair, unhelpful and rather snobbish.
I am very skeptical of theories purporting to explain people's opinions by psychoanalyzing them. There was a genre of biography in vogue in the 1960s and 1970s which took this line using Freudian (pseudo-)psychology. I used to refer to it as "character assassination by psychobabble."
I doubt that the majority of the people you dismiss as rightoid cranks possess some presumably innate psychological character flaw which is responsible for their opinions.
A more plausible explanation for the mistaken and even ridiculous beliefs of "rightoids" is that they have throughout their lives been subjected to schools, media and various authorities lying to them, browbeating them, leading them astray and attempting to manipulate their attitudes and beliefs, often in sophisticated ways. At the same time, there has been a marked paucity of honest educators, journalists, authorities and public intellectuals speaking truth to them. Such voices have long been suppressed so that few hear them.
Is it any wonder then that so many people are clueless and end up believing some dumb things in their cursory, crude, untutored attempts at understanding the world?
BTW there are sound scientific reasons to reject both pasteurization and vaccination.
Pasteurization destroys some nutrients and natural anti-microbial factors in milk. Unpasteurized milk will last longer than pasteurized milk without spoiling.
Vaccination has caused and continues to cause immense damage to health, especially now when dozens of vaccines are routinely administered to newborns. This is institutionalized malpractice.
The natural unmanipulated immune system will provide superior protection against pathogens than vaccines so long as people are well-nourished and healthy. If we really cared about people's health, a far more efficient public health policy than pushing vaccination would aim at providing reasonably priced, nutrient dense, organically raised, whole foods to as many people as possible. This is a good example of the sort of policy a nationalist government should pursue.
Rejecting vaccines as unnecessary and harmful is not an a priori "romantic primitivist" judgment based on the syllogism "vaccines are artificial therefore they are bad." It's an empirical judgment based on intuitive good sense and the personal experience of many people backed up by a growing body of empirical biomedical research. The medical establishment refuses to carry out such research and attempts to suppress such research which gets done anyway due to a minority of courageous honest researchers carrying on despite the prevailing institutional bias in favor of vaccination. There is excellent reason to distrust today's medical establishment.
The “primitives” conjecture that if THEY lied to us about the elections, 20th century history, the COVID threat, 9/11 etc … then maybe they were lied to about other things as well.
This used to be called “pattern recognition” and a sign of high IQ. Perhaps even a belated recognition of personal responsibility to investigate for oneself the claims of the authorities instead of blindly believing.
Apparently, this is a bad thing now and worthy of derision. We are only allowed to disbelieve and question what our alt media influencers tell us to.
It has to be taken for granted that most people believe some very silly things and everybody will get at least some things badly wrong. After all, a huge amount of effort has been put into sowing confusion and false beliefs among the masses.
The whole point of being a useful online commenter is that you have figured out some things at least and therefore can try to spread your understanding to those who read your content. Kvetching about all the nonsensical beliefs which indeed are to be found in abundance is not helpful. Just say what you believe to be true and your reasons for this belief in plain language.
Amen, well said. This essay was dripping with resentment
Rightoids are fun though. Lefties are mechanical and robotic.
To be fair, there is reason to doubt many things, 9/11, the American assassinations over the years. Even Chem trails are now being partially proven. But I do take the point that you cannot collapse into a total conspiracy mindset as it is both politically and personally unhealthy.
9/11 was never proven, you are literally who keith is referring to in this article
Chemtrails weren't proven
Lenin never did attract the majority of Marxists his entire career of debate and writing. Only when it looked like his new government will survive did he began to attract a massive audience, amid hundreds of different socialist and Marxists groups (one reason why the Russian Revolution was such a mess). His biggest advantage was a lack of doctrinal purity. He was willing to cut deals with the devil to secure his coup. What gets overlooked is his background as lower nobility with a middle class lifestyle. So, he was already used to taking command over his own family and to think in a truly political way, that is systemically, from a young age. How the Communists organized to punch far above their weight class holds much lessons for the nationalists today. There are many opinions on the right, many worthwhile, but they tends toward either/or. Worse, they are stuck in the 20th century mindset. The first question should be how to create a flourishing life within a flourishing society, not “is it capitalism” or “is it socialism”? Those are tools, not goals. Start with a simple vision and a goal, and judge the means by this light. That’s the first step toward creating a system of simple actions that anyone can perform even if you are a poor housewife with little time.
Funny, I just happened to read this last night. First time I've really ever read Lenin.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/crnq/index.htm
He tells those dissenting groups to stop it and let the capitalism bring on international Communism!
Truly funny.
Liberals are good at hanging themselves. By exporting feminism, they are making the tide of color receding and making themselves barren, creating space for ourselves.
I recently asked a “rightoid” friend if he could name some elites on the right at the ready to take over once the liberals are routed. His list was very short.
They will appear. The left's greatest issue is the coalition of minorities that make up multiple nations inside the USA. While it still benefits to vote for D's, they elect their own to local and eventually federal offices as their closed off non white communities grow and strengthen.
I really think about 6-10 more years + an economic downturn just enough to really be an issue (we have gas it so good it will not take a total crash but it's hard to get there)
...and then my guess is a small borough, large neighborhood or two, or a small city somewhere will suddenly have some reason to tell the Federal Government "NO" in a Governor Wallace kind of way , if you get my drift.
But then what will that federal government do? Force the minorities that reject it's rule to comply?
And of course, 99% of us in the US won't live anywhere near it. But it will happen here and there. And I think that's where the dissolution and balkanization of stuff will start to break down and happen.
I don't know why I just rambled on about all that. I just got stuck on it and couldn't stop
I think we shouldn’t use terms like “rightoid” because they degrade the meaning of the suffix “-oid”
Keith Woods is not a traditional Catholic. He is a false prophet—a modern‑day Simon Magus who uses the symbols of the Faith to advance a political project that is fundamentally pagan. His "traditionalism" is a mask for ethnolatry—the worship of the tribe, the deification of the ancestor, the sacralization of the genome. This is the same error that the prophets of Israel condemned. It is the same error that Saint Paul condemned.
Nice article Keith, provides a lot constructive defintions.
Rightoids prevent the formation of any bottom-up movement.
Really powerful article.
Well said
Fundamentally, the right is the “leave me alone” party and the left is the “do what I say” party.
The leftoid has more trust, and less ego involved in placing their faith in the reasoning of their elites. The rightoid trusts no one, and earnestly believes only he or she can know the answer to every single plight and topic occurring. It’s truly pathetic.
The right-wingers that do tend to lead parties or even states today are also people often not worth trusting or following. Compare that to titans like Jean-Marie Le Pen or even Jörg Haider who actually knew what they were doing.
I’m bummed Keith framed this as binary. Agency is a thing. Complex systems are also things. There is a balance to be had.
I agree and I'm not denying agency. Like I said in the article, the problem isn't that they believe conspiracies but that they assume them. Agency is sometimes but not always an explanation.
Thanks for clarifying, Keith. I appreciate your scholarly approach and hope you can resist becoming jaded as the “masses” wake up. I am often frustrated as I imagine you are on a daily basis as one of our original deep thinkers.
I think the problem is less how “rightoids” think and is more a problem of entertainment. You included this with your comment about amoral showman types in this article. Josh Neal wrote about this too in his book on conspiracy theories. Morgoth touched on it in one of his recent essays too. There seems to be a desire for ever more “forbidden knowledge”. Understanding Zionism, JQ more broadly, role of secret societies, elite theory, ruthlessness of great power politics, etc isn’t enough. Has to be aliens, demons, chemtrails, flat-earth-moon-landing denier conspiritardism.
There were 33 comments, so I *had* to make a 34th to dispel bad orgone energy... Jokes aside, I come from this 'conspiracy' space. The 'David Icke to EtNationalist pipeline is one less traveled, but it exists. I have some friends like what the commenter Pius describes, and so we have to simply agree to disagree sometimes.
One tiny nitpick: I seem to recall you sharing a graph on Telegram, numerating references to 'racism/racist' in US newspapers pre and post Occupy Wall Str (references in major newspapers went up many orders of magnitude). I am very possibly mistaken. Or maybe you forwarded it from Joel Davis' nuked account. I'm not trying to 'do a gotcha' here, but I think it's a good example of 'them' distracting people. I will spare you, and keep this comment brief. Excellent essay; a hardy perennial.
Keith, why do I have the constant feeling politics is deep down about different understandings of masculinity? MAGA Shaman seems to about someone obsessed about maxing out masculinity in some very visceral way, that feels historic and timeless but is actually fake.
Woods is silent on this. He has aligned himself with the "Christian nationalism" of Nick Fuentes—a movement that, for all its rhetorical opposition to the "globalist" order, remains fundamentally pro‑capitalist, pro‑usury, and blind to the providential role of the BRICS nations in breaking the Ring of the dollar. His "traditionalism" is a dead end because it has no sword. It looks to build a "white ethno‑state" within the US borders, to withdraw from the world, and to wait for the collapse of the system. This is the passivity of the Protestant quietist, filtered through racial paranoia.