The Movement Is Not Dead

It has been a tough few months for the populist right. Labour won in the UK, leaving Reform with only five seats. The Communists won in France, ending the hope of a right-wing government. They tried to kill Trump and replaced Biden with a likely more formidable candidate, Kamala Harris. Trump has disavowed Project 2025 four times. What are young, motivated, radical men fighting against decay to make of this?It seems the baby boomers–––in their last gasp of political power–––are closing their eyes and voting for anything but that which goes against the Western consensus of the last hundred years. The right can pretend to be happy that the Right in France had the highest vote count or that the Reform outperformed, but the fact is that they lost.What needs to be remembered is that this was not the first battle in the long war to save the West. Nigel Farage lost every parliamentary election he ran in before this year and was laughed at for decades before finally pulling Great Britain out of Europe. America-First populists lost every election of the last century before Trump broke through. In recent history, the movement has had some successes, but expecting only unencumbered victory on the path to reviving the West will only lead to disappointment.Learning from the PastWhat did similar movements do in the past when faced with defeat in decades of little hope? They looked forward. Enoch Powell told the Conservative Party Conference in 1968, “People are ready to tell us: 'This is not possible, that is not possible.’ I say: whatever the true interest of our country calls for is always possible. We have nothing to fear but our own doubts.” Powell would never hold elected office again, but his warning about mass migration would be completely vindicated by the 2000s. His legacy was revived both in UKIP under Farage and in the fringe of the British right.Jonathan Bowden, cultural officer of the British National Party stressed the importance of identity in the political fight: “To read about your own culture is a revolutionary act...Knowledge is power. Listen to high music, go to the national gallery, look at what we’ve produced as a group.” He reminded his party and fellow countryman to be loyal to their identity. It isn’t enough to be American or European. As long as the right understands what it means to be a Westerner and an American, in the long arc of history, we cannot lose.Another great philosopher in a time of distress and turmoil, Oswald Spengler, wrote Decline of the West while he saw the destruction of Germany during and after WWI. He argued that greatness is to hold onto the lost position, to be the “Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him.” Jesus Christ himself was crucified on the cross, but that was not the end of the story.This does not mean the right should stand still as the West continues to fall, but to remain steadfast, undeterred by specific electoral and personal setbacks. In 2007, in a political environment nowhere near as optimistic as ours, Bowden ended a speech with these words of advice.“Greatness is in the mind and in the fist. The glory of our tribe is not behind us. We can be great again. But the first thing that we have to do is to say, 'I walk towards the tunnel, and I’m on my own, and I’m not afraid. And I have no regrets.’”