Hitler, like Napoleon, was often referred to by his social betters as “the little corporal.”
Both of these leaders reaped the discontent with the former leadership class to attempt to right the wrongs caused by them, to popular adulation and acclaim. The collapse of the old order gave them the opportunity that they had hoped for, and they both seized it, taking it all the way to the end.
We know how their stories ended because it’s in the past. But many people in the general opposition to the current world order do not draw the conclusion that popular revolt is not the universal cure for misrule. Popular revolt, the old scholars knew, is more often the preface to an extended period of tyranny and disorder.
The importance of classical learning in such a case helps the natural elites within a country, to the extent that any remain, to make critical decisions which are better informed. In England, after the Civil War, they restored Charles II, despite the misrule of Charles I. Had general opinion been different, Richard Cromwell might have stayed in charge, and the restoration might never have happened. There are certainly many criticisms to bring up with what followed for England, but they at least managed to spend a century or two in charge of most of the known world, which as empires go, is an impressive performance.
Popular revolt seems like it should be a purging action that restores justice and order to a country. It is more often a time of recriminations, violence, and disorder. Given that the Western leadership actively believes in the holy power of populist revolt, it would not be surprising if such a revolt eventually consumes the West once again. This sort of regular auto-cannibalization will keep happening until general opinion within the influential classes of people shifts back towards favoring natural hierarchy over the weight of mass opinion.
In universities, they try to teach people in the liberal arts to do whatever they can to essentially ‘prevent another Hitler,’ at the same time as they affirm the same mass-democratic means that have been routinely annihilating the West since 1789 and even before that time. In Ukraine, the American State Department even funneled support to Ukrainian fighters styling themselves after the Third Reich. So much for all those Hitler specials on the History Channel, not to mention all that sensitivity training that they must have all undergone at the Kennedy School for Government.
That school’s name may have been appropriate, because the War in the Ukraine has been the most humiliating failure of the American secret services since the Bay of Pigs.
Anyway.
Mass opinion favors what is popular now. Rule by aristocracy takes into account what is true, with reference going back even to the distant past. Chesterton described tradition as the “democracy of the dead,” but it is a democracy in which only a handful of people really get much of a vote.
While it is still a competition for the opinions of living people, it is to encourage the living to respect what the dead learned in their short time, rather than to get them to rally-round the latest incarnation of the little corporal. Whipping up high emotions among the ignorant and impressionable is one of the most effective ways to get them all killed. If you care about your people, then you will work to preserve their characters, rather than sacrificing them for nothing.
“the influential classes of people shifts back towards favoring natural hierarchy.”
As opposed to what they favor now: peddling pornography to the masses. That by the way is indeed exceptional in History.
Not so much peddling as stealing everything that’s not nailed down. Peddling would be a marvelous improvement.
Yes, so man seize your birthright. Save yourselves, you just might save the nation with you. Take it. There is nothing in your way, and you’d have no shortage of followers.
And note – someone will.
As far as the sins above, at present who is the American Corporal? Or Corporals? Who’s leading the masses to their doom and ruining their character? It’s not the masses, they eat what’s in front of them. If it were Shakespeare they’d be quoting him. Maybe Falstaff’s sidebars but it would be a great improvement over dick and fecal jokes.
The Corporals you refer to – very different – are of course prisoners of geography and classic land power dilemmas. I think both should have made for Gibraltar and left Russia alone. But both are trapped by Sea Powers who had enormous banks and resources.
BTW I’d wait until the Little Corporal was dead before I started dissing him. Or Her.
Oliver Cromwell, you mean?
Richard was his son.
If you will not rally to restore America’s and Anglo-Something’s fortunes, make a better end than this…
And one might ask oneself why 2 very different men with very different regimes were led to the same desperate and risky courses, and what History led them there?
Both of course did not want to live under Anglo-Saxon Financial Slavery, the ruinous end of which is upon us all.
Ants have hierarchy, sometimes this involves the kidnapping and enslavement of the brood of other colonies. Social parasitism in Primates may involve high status adult Chimps being breast fed by the under caste. Is it not true that global usury -coin clipping is but a sophisticated human form of this same biological behavior.
In many cases, the parasitized host mutinies with consequences for the parasite. This might be worth exploring. What are the conditions for successful destruction of the social parasites by the hosts?
“Democracy of the dead” has a nice ring to it.
The traditional religion of…everywhere in the world (if you include pharonic religion as the traditonal religion of Africa), is, of course, ancestor worship.
Also in regards to the ‘little corporal’ thing, I reckon this is a very important point in order to make the distinction between a monarch and any other dictator. Dictators become despots because they see themselves as having direct authority over everyone. Monarchs are generally part of a broader feudal aristocracy, and in their orignal form would have direct rule only over the lords, who have authority over the people (perhaps via still lesser authorities) to tax people and raise armies. At the lower ends of the pyramid “The Englishman’s home is his castle” and the regular man has sovereignty in his home.
That would be the subsidiarity principle. The little corporal just stays a corporal when there are intermediate authorities. When all the intermediate authorities are dead or exiled, it’s just the corporal.
So the task of avoiding that must involve shoring up or restoring the intermediate authorities who have been displaced, starting from the bottom.
Watching a Texas Hold ’em tournament on TV many years ago, I saw someone who reminded me of Hitler and Napoleon. His nickname was “All-in Tony”, and his strategy was just that — push in all his chips and scare everyone else into folding.
I thought, this guy is going to make it into the final round, then he’s going to get crushed. And that’s exactly what happened.
This is a bit too comfortable for my liking. Our ‘old order’ is corporate elites, bankers and polticians – not the ancien regime or any kind of European aristocracy. You are ascribing the righteousness of the former to the latter.
You are also selective about your ‘little corporals’. Franco restored the monarchy.
Elements of populism can be harnessed at the right stage, since the political apparatus is there. Ignoring it in favour of a ‘tend to your family and congregation, your time will come’ will have us implicitly funding and supporting the status quo. We have to eventually confront power, rather than ‘organically engineer’ a traditionalist society.