Greg Johnson’s "New Right vs. Old Right"
Review of New Right versus Old Right by Greg Johnson
At the micro level it is still possible to call America a democratic country — with various local officials being elected by a citizenry fortified by the right to bear arms and express their opinions. But at the macro level — that of cities, states, and the nation itself — the level at which people need to be represented in order to implement real change (or stop it happening), it is quite a different story. Here, America is a masterpiece of anti-democracy — a society controlled by oligarchic elites that agree on most things and which use their power (the media, the judiciary, and the political parties they pay for) to check any independent impulse that arises from the People.
The cunning beauty of this system is that the sheep who are controlled still think that the shepherd and the sheepdogs controlling them are just other sheep. The false political consciousness that this reveals is also bolstered by relative prosperity and material comfort, especially for the more potent and intelligent members of society.
The consequence of this is that America is a de facto political desert in a way that other countries of the West are not. Unlike France, Finland, or Hungary, or a number of other European countries, where there is a considerable variety of political options available for voters, in America there are no meaningful choices outside the false duopoly which is merely a disguised monopoly.
But the desert has always attracted its ascetics, its mad-eyed lunatics or true holy men, who revere the truth or their delusions more than their personal comforts. From the desert, as history has proved, a force can sometimes emerge to shake the world. . . .
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