Historically revolutionaries are well-educated and from middle class or wealthy families. Che, Fidel, and Osama bin Laden were all born to wealthy families. Che studied medicine, Fidel law, and OBL business. It takes education and material comfort to be swayed by utopian idealism/ideology.
But for mass appeal, you need a young population with a surplus of restless young men. Western Europe has a median age of 45; people are not interested in revolution when they are preoccupied with getting their state pension.
Meanwhile, Gaza has a median age of 18 and Hamas recruits teenagers (15-18yo). The region of the world with the most revolutionary fervor is the one with a combination of high literacy, high TFR, low median age, high unemployment, surplus of unmarried men (polygyny), and a deep, pre-existing religious ideology that promises utopia/heaven for believers who take up the cause in its name. QED.
>Historically revolutionaries are well-educated and from middle class or wealthy families. Che, Fidel, and Osama bin Laden were all born to wealthy families. Che studied medicine, Fidel law, and OBL business.
Elite persistence. The leaders will generally be from elite families or have elite family members, but still, the masses they recruit won't be.
>But for mass appeal, you need a young population with a surplus of restless young men. Western Europe has a median age of 45; people are not interested in revolution when they are preoccupied with getting their state pension.
See my addendum for a brief point on median age. I do believe that Gazans are perhaps the best people other than North Koreans at resisting a foreign power.
I would not associate with Gaza with any kind of successful resistance... the Oct 7th attack was repelled within 48 hours leading to near 100% KIA/captured of the Hamas fighters. Since then there is a roughly 50:1 KIA ratio (~20K Hamas vs. ~500 IDF).
The most likely outcome will be the partial/complete depopulation of Gaza (the Trump plan) consistent with historical conflicts of this nature (Nagorno Karabakh 2020).
Gaza is a non-self sustaining exclave, it can only survive by constant resupply and funding from external powers. A Western world that is becoming weaker and more medieval (a thesis I like) will have less excess cash to fund pet projects. (This includes likely drawdown in US foreign aid to Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt).
For what are effectively prison inmates to stage any kind of resistance at all against a nuclear armed superpower with effectively unlimited military power is remarkable. To even sustain the willpower to resist is remarkable. It’s clear that the United States and Israel believed that willpower would have been crushed by their oppression years ago.
Very interesting and thoughtful points. The only way this goes off is if someone like a Trump sanctions it. It’s like you said the right has been too concerned about the Feds to organize. The left has almost completely abandoned masculinity. It’s a strange time we live in.
Other factors toward the passivism of the lumpenproles include the ubiquitous use of pornography (which prevents sexual frustration from building to the point of action), the majority of the population being obese (due to ubiquitous seed oils added into everything, which adds 700 calories a day on average: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/most-americans-have-metabolic-syndrome ), estrogen added into everything resulting in massively decreasing testosterone, the greater sophistication of propaganda, the mentally deadening effects of public school, the decline of reading in favor of Current Thing foreveronline, etc. There's a lot of factors that turn people into passive ruinations.
Very few will mention that obesity is accompanied by a form of mental torpor that does not lend itself to revolution even if all other conditions were amenable to battle. People simply cannot do much once they are over the 250 pound mark, or thereabouts, for non-athletes. A human being becomes incarcerated within his or her own flesh.
The estrogen hypothesis is debunked. The trend of declining age of puberty and testosterone levels precedes the alleged estrogenic environment by well over a century. This is ignoring the fact declining testosterone levels are a statistical artefact (not real).
You mentioned seed oil. Crude cottonseed oil is such an effective male contraceptive it's sold on Amazon to combat rat infestations, and has been successfully trialed in humans. Side effects include permanent sterility.
Why do you never see the active ingredient, gossypol, blamed for declining sperm counts?
Why does no one recommend testosterone to combat low testosterone?
Anytime I see the word "estrogen", "testosterone", "seed oil", or "plastic" I know I'm reading nonsense promulgated without critical thought.
I don't think you have considered the third world migrant: violent, low IQ. short-sighted, and criminal. They also harbor deep rooted racial hatred for others (including other 3rd world migrants) and are completely immersed in the grievance culture. They will band together along ethnic lines, but most have very low levels of agency. They are the new peasant class, though they lack the hardiness of past peasantry; they do not lack the cruelty. Even if they are part of a drug cartel, they are still dependent on Western infrastructure which none of them can maintain.
In America, the country boys, the red necks, the hillbillies still exist, and they are tough and many are a jack of all trades (not necessarily very good at things, but good enough to get by). They are their very own peasant class. While the white liberal progressives will be quickly killed by their golems, many white conservatives will survive.
Civil war will be along ethnic lines.
Also, supply chain breakdowns will mean mass starvation and mass death. I worked as a frozen food manager at a large supermarket over two decades ago, and it was all on time delivery. There were no warehouses of food to be looted. The shelves had to be restocked constantly. Looters would be lucky to get a day of food off the shelves in a collapse scenario. The meat, produce, and frozen food would spoil quickly.
When the electricity fails (which it will quickly), there will be no running water, electric light, refrigeration, or Internet. Waterborne illness will wipe out millions very, very quickly.
No ERs, no hospitals, and no pharma.
I see places like the UK suffering horric collapses with millions of military age males from harrowing hellhole places like Somalia and the Sudan running wild in the streets. I expect supply chains in the UK to be the first to breakdown in Europe. When the welfare system goes down, the welfare class will go crazy, but most of these people will be dead in a few weeks, at best.
There is a lot more I could say about this, but I think you get the idea. I think your points in the essay are valid, but they are only part of the picture.
Our western age is the most pacified, weakened, comfort based pussies the world has ever seen. Consider reading ‘The Present Age’ by Soren Kierkegaard.
Anyways, my point. Although the west is weak, we could become savages if the following occurs
Nine missed meals. Apparently, it is when people miss 9 meals in a row that panic and desperation kicks in. If the west ever found themselves without food. There’s no telling the direction things could go, and fast.
To your excellent point about the lack of idealism, I would not underestimate the role that religion played in providing the idealism to drive previous revolts. Up to and including the battle of Blair Mountain. Listening to Cooper’s podcast I was struck by the fact that this was only a hundred years ago, and yet seems inconceivable that the necessary conditions could recur today. Maybe if the pauperisation of the lumpen proletariat continues back to 1920 levels. Not that anyone should wish for that.
Broadly agree with your thesis. I doubt actual insurrection will go beyond what was seen in the 1970s in the US. And much less in the rest of the West where the population is less armed / unarmed. On the anniversary of the Oklahoma bombing we see how deeply penetrated all US insurgent groups are by the Feds. It was already thus in the McCarthy period and must be so much more so now in the decades after McVeigh. No doubt even our abstract discussions here are being tracked by the security state.
The devolution into warlordism or other forms of substate power seems very plausible. I would not rule out some kind of race war in Europe, although the Turner Diaries have a long tradition now of predictive failure.
This was very good. I am an early millenial myself and I can say that as long as the system does not do a sudden drop out on us, the most you would get on a mass level from us is complaining. I see a similar dynamic in Zoomers.
The American dream (or Australian or English… whatever) dream is something that only seems to still exist in Boomers. None of us actually think it is possible. It certainly seems impossible.
A slow degeneration will not allow for revolutionary conditions. What’s more, even if we do get a sudden drop in material conditions (which probably only would occur based on either a miscalculation by the elite or a black swan), it wouldn’t be a true mass movement.
As you pointed to, you would get those who have the mental abilities to act effectively taking control.
I have seen and been around the standard Leftists from around my age down to teenagers, and honestly, I am not impressed. While they have fantasies of violence against fascists, I see a group of people obsessed with their own mental problems and sexual proclivities who I think would get wiped out. Just how easily can you handle yourself with friends dying around you? It is easy to talk about killing fascists (which when they say it is almost a meaningless term with no intellectual rigor and more or less just means “things and people I don’t like”). Much harder to do it. Especially when you often have problems just going into a restaurant and eating without feeling anxious
But the right isn’t much better. While I think most have a more solid grounding, they are frankly in a state of mourning for what they know they won’t get, and like to live in a world of illusions and remembrance of the past.
But not all is lost. Who said fixing problems has to come through mass movements? I think that by navigating this landscape we may well be able to win.
The biggest thing I have noticed about the system is this: they aren’t all that competent.
It is an odd view to say that it was peasants who sustained all revolutions? Surely that was role of first the bourgeoisie and then the proletariat? When I think of peasant revolutions I think of failure. If I try to find examples of successful peasant revolutions, Latin America maybe, but even then I suspect those were bourgeois revolutions in the name of the peasantry.
Anyway just a quibble. The main thrust of your article is very interesting.
Peasants essentially always fail when they're on their own, but when one group of elites rallies them they are potent. Also when it comes to serious guerrilla warfare they are needed by insurgents, no serious guerrilla war has been fought in a developed country without peasants. Any revolution that does not rally the peasants is described as a coup. A relatively bloodless overturning of one group of elites by another group of elites.
I think one point of comparison would be the People’s Crusade (or Crusades generally). You had a large population that had no upward mobility and no real purpose who were galvanized the second someone put a grand, but tangible, ideal in front of them.
While the lumpenprole is certainly not ideal for revolutions I do think there is tremendous potential for someone to capture the youth in a mass movement. Sure, they dont want to volunteer to fight but I know deep down many would rather die with purpose suddenly than continue the slow death on their phones.
I think whoever manages to capture the attention of the youth and is willing to cross the line of violence with state power (or paramilitary power)while holding an idealistic message could still radically change the West. History is not dead yet.
I have little doubt that the human material for a revolution is not as good as it once was but the same applies to the counter-revolutionaries. Many are leaving the military and police because they don't feel that what they are doing is right. In time they along with
construction workers, agricultural workers and suchlike may produce a viable revolutionary force. After all it is said that 3 percent of the population is sufficient for a successful revution.
According to Hopi prophecy, the day will come when people in high places will be hunted. This will get out of control. The hunting will gather strength and spread. This situation might even erupt on our land (North America). Finally, this will lead us to the Biblical version of Armageddon (the Hopi version is closely related).
We are in the age of total war and asymmetrical warfare. The assassination of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare by Luigi Mangione is along these lines. When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. If we don’t start seeing arrests of the criminals in our governments and corporations what else can we expect but for the people to take matters into their own hands.
Idealism has been dead for generations. I'm not sure exactly when it died, but every generation in living memory just used it as a cover for their unique degeneracy and self-indulgence.
I think if you asked them, they'd say they were rebelling against post-WW2 mythology. In reality, they just wanted to fuck and do drugs, and it worked for them because they were the first generation with mass contraception and a labor market easy enough that they could easily settle down once they got bored of the sex and drugs.
Historically revolutionaries are well-educated and from middle class or wealthy families. Che, Fidel, and Osama bin Laden were all born to wealthy families. Che studied medicine, Fidel law, and OBL business. It takes education and material comfort to be swayed by utopian idealism/ideology.
But for mass appeal, you need a young population with a surplus of restless young men. Western Europe has a median age of 45; people are not interested in revolution when they are preoccupied with getting their state pension.
Meanwhile, Gaza has a median age of 18 and Hamas recruits teenagers (15-18yo). The region of the world with the most revolutionary fervor is the one with a combination of high literacy, high TFR, low median age, high unemployment, surplus of unmarried men (polygyny), and a deep, pre-existing religious ideology that promises utopia/heaven for believers who take up the cause in its name. QED.
>Historically revolutionaries are well-educated and from middle class or wealthy families. Che, Fidel, and Osama bin Laden were all born to wealthy families. Che studied medicine, Fidel law, and OBL business.
Elite persistence. The leaders will generally be from elite families or have elite family members, but still, the masses they recruit won't be.
>But for mass appeal, you need a young population with a surplus of restless young men. Western Europe has a median age of 45; people are not interested in revolution when they are preoccupied with getting their state pension.
See my addendum for a brief point on median age. I do believe that Gazans are perhaps the best people other than North Koreans at resisting a foreign power.
I would not associate with Gaza with any kind of successful resistance... the Oct 7th attack was repelled within 48 hours leading to near 100% KIA/captured of the Hamas fighters. Since then there is a roughly 50:1 KIA ratio (~20K Hamas vs. ~500 IDF).
The most likely outcome will be the partial/complete depopulation of Gaza (the Trump plan) consistent with historical conflicts of this nature (Nagorno Karabakh 2020).
Gaza is a non-self sustaining exclave, it can only survive by constant resupply and funding from external powers. A Western world that is becoming weaker and more medieval (a thesis I like) will have less excess cash to fund pet projects. (This includes likely drawdown in US foreign aid to Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt).
For what are effectively prison inmates to stage any kind of resistance at all against a nuclear armed superpower with effectively unlimited military power is remarkable. To even sustain the willpower to resist is remarkable. It’s clear that the United States and Israel believed that willpower would have been crushed by their oppression years ago.
Very interesting and thoughtful points. The only way this goes off is if someone like a Trump sanctions it. It’s like you said the right has been too concerned about the Feds to organize. The left has almost completely abandoned masculinity. It’s a strange time we live in.
Other factors toward the passivism of the lumpenproles include the ubiquitous use of pornography (which prevents sexual frustration from building to the point of action), the majority of the population being obese (due to ubiquitous seed oils added into everything, which adds 700 calories a day on average: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/most-americans-have-metabolic-syndrome ), estrogen added into everything resulting in massively decreasing testosterone, the greater sophistication of propaganda, the mentally deadening effects of public school, the decline of reading in favor of Current Thing foreveronline, etc. There's a lot of factors that turn people into passive ruinations.
Very few will mention that obesity is accompanied by a form of mental torpor that does not lend itself to revolution even if all other conditions were amenable to battle. People simply cannot do much once they are over the 250 pound mark, or thereabouts, for non-athletes. A human being becomes incarcerated within his or her own flesh.
The estrogen hypothesis is debunked. The trend of declining age of puberty and testosterone levels precedes the alleged estrogenic environment by well over a century. This is ignoring the fact declining testosterone levels are a statistical artefact (not real).
You mentioned seed oil. Crude cottonseed oil is such an effective male contraceptive it's sold on Amazon to combat rat infestations, and has been successfully trialed in humans. Side effects include permanent sterility.
Why do you never see the active ingredient, gossypol, blamed for declining sperm counts?
Why does no one recommend testosterone to combat low testosterone?
Anytime I see the word "estrogen", "testosterone", "seed oil", or "plastic" I know I'm reading nonsense promulgated without critical thought.
I don't think you have considered the third world migrant: violent, low IQ. short-sighted, and criminal. They also harbor deep rooted racial hatred for others (including other 3rd world migrants) and are completely immersed in the grievance culture. They will band together along ethnic lines, but most have very low levels of agency. They are the new peasant class, though they lack the hardiness of past peasantry; they do not lack the cruelty. Even if they are part of a drug cartel, they are still dependent on Western infrastructure which none of them can maintain.
In America, the country boys, the red necks, the hillbillies still exist, and they are tough and many are a jack of all trades (not necessarily very good at things, but good enough to get by). They are their very own peasant class. While the white liberal progressives will be quickly killed by their golems, many white conservatives will survive.
Civil war will be along ethnic lines.
Also, supply chain breakdowns will mean mass starvation and mass death. I worked as a frozen food manager at a large supermarket over two decades ago, and it was all on time delivery. There were no warehouses of food to be looted. The shelves had to be restocked constantly. Looters would be lucky to get a day of food off the shelves in a collapse scenario. The meat, produce, and frozen food would spoil quickly.
When the electricity fails (which it will quickly), there will be no running water, electric light, refrigeration, or Internet. Waterborne illness will wipe out millions very, very quickly.
No ERs, no hospitals, and no pharma.
I see places like the UK suffering horric collapses with millions of military age males from harrowing hellhole places like Somalia and the Sudan running wild in the streets. I expect supply chains in the UK to be the first to breakdown in Europe. When the welfare system goes down, the welfare class will go crazy, but most of these people will be dead in a few weeks, at best.
There is a lot more I could say about this, but I think you get the idea. I think your points in the essay are valid, but they are only part of the picture.
We are entering a new Dark Age.
A great article. One thought.
Our western age is the most pacified, weakened, comfort based pussies the world has ever seen. Consider reading ‘The Present Age’ by Soren Kierkegaard.
Anyways, my point. Although the west is weak, we could become savages if the following occurs
Nine missed meals. Apparently, it is when people miss 9 meals in a row that panic and desperation kicks in. If the west ever found themselves without food. There’s no telling the direction things could go, and fast.
To your excellent point about the lack of idealism, I would not underestimate the role that religion played in providing the idealism to drive previous revolts. Up to and including the battle of Blair Mountain. Listening to Cooper’s podcast I was struck by the fact that this was only a hundred years ago, and yet seems inconceivable that the necessary conditions could recur today. Maybe if the pauperisation of the lumpen proletariat continues back to 1920 levels. Not that anyone should wish for that.
Broadly agree with your thesis. I doubt actual insurrection will go beyond what was seen in the 1970s in the US. And much less in the rest of the West where the population is less armed / unarmed. On the anniversary of the Oklahoma bombing we see how deeply penetrated all US insurgent groups are by the Feds. It was already thus in the McCarthy period and must be so much more so now in the decades after McVeigh. No doubt even our abstract discussions here are being tracked by the security state.
The devolution into warlordism or other forms of substate power seems very plausible. I would not rule out some kind of race war in Europe, although the Turner Diaries have a long tradition now of predictive failure.
This was very good. I am an early millenial myself and I can say that as long as the system does not do a sudden drop out on us, the most you would get on a mass level from us is complaining. I see a similar dynamic in Zoomers.
The American dream (or Australian or English… whatever) dream is something that only seems to still exist in Boomers. None of us actually think it is possible. It certainly seems impossible.
A slow degeneration will not allow for revolutionary conditions. What’s more, even if we do get a sudden drop in material conditions (which probably only would occur based on either a miscalculation by the elite or a black swan), it wouldn’t be a true mass movement.
As you pointed to, you would get those who have the mental abilities to act effectively taking control.
I have seen and been around the standard Leftists from around my age down to teenagers, and honestly, I am not impressed. While they have fantasies of violence against fascists, I see a group of people obsessed with their own mental problems and sexual proclivities who I think would get wiped out. Just how easily can you handle yourself with friends dying around you? It is easy to talk about killing fascists (which when they say it is almost a meaningless term with no intellectual rigor and more or less just means “things and people I don’t like”). Much harder to do it. Especially when you often have problems just going into a restaurant and eating without feeling anxious
But the right isn’t much better. While I think most have a more solid grounding, they are frankly in a state of mourning for what they know they won’t get, and like to live in a world of illusions and remembrance of the past.
But not all is lost. Who said fixing problems has to come through mass movements? I think that by navigating this landscape we may well be able to win.
The biggest thing I have noticed about the system is this: they aren’t all that competent.
It is an odd view to say that it was peasants who sustained all revolutions? Surely that was role of first the bourgeoisie and then the proletariat? When I think of peasant revolutions I think of failure. If I try to find examples of successful peasant revolutions, Latin America maybe, but even then I suspect those were bourgeois revolutions in the name of the peasantry.
Anyway just a quibble. The main thrust of your article is very interesting.
Peasants essentially always fail when they're on their own, but when one group of elites rallies them they are potent. Also when it comes to serious guerrilla warfare they are needed by insurgents, no serious guerrilla war has been fought in a developed country without peasants. Any revolution that does not rally the peasants is described as a coup. A relatively bloodless overturning of one group of elites by another group of elites.
Misogynist garbage
Seethe.
Your beliefs are outdated relics.
I think one point of comparison would be the People’s Crusade (or Crusades generally). You had a large population that had no upward mobility and no real purpose who were galvanized the second someone put a grand, but tangible, ideal in front of them.
While the lumpenprole is certainly not ideal for revolutions I do think there is tremendous potential for someone to capture the youth in a mass movement. Sure, they dont want to volunteer to fight but I know deep down many would rather die with purpose suddenly than continue the slow death on their phones.
I think whoever manages to capture the attention of the youth and is willing to cross the line of violence with state power (or paramilitary power)while holding an idealistic message could still radically change the West. History is not dead yet.
Crown in the gutter…
YAWN
Substack should put a counter on this cliche trust fund wino inspired self-indulgent crap and save everyone the trouble of a permethrin treatment.
I have little doubt that the human material for a revolution is not as good as it once was but the same applies to the counter-revolutionaries. Many are leaving the military and police because they don't feel that what they are doing is right. In time they along with
construction workers, agricultural workers and suchlike may produce a viable revolutionary force. After all it is said that 3 percent of the population is sufficient for a successful revution.
Very sobering, enlightening post. Thanks for writing it.
According to Hopi prophecy, the day will come when people in high places will be hunted. This will get out of control. The hunting will gather strength and spread. This situation might even erupt on our land (North America). Finally, this will lead us to the Biblical version of Armageddon (the Hopi version is closely related).
We are in the age of total war and asymmetrical warfare. The assassination of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare by Luigi Mangione is along these lines. When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. If we don’t start seeing arrests of the criminals in our governments and corporations what else can we expect but for the people to take matters into their own hands.
George Washington is said to have experienced a vision that became known as the "Indian prophecy". Worth looking up.
We are in the midst of a quickening.
Agreed. I believe that we are in the end times. All prophecies seem to be converging on 2030.
I doubt we will make it through 2026 without serious upheaval.
As a Gen-Xer, apathetic Zoomers bring tears of joy to my eyes. It's nice to know other people have given up.
And the idea "things get worse, but not bad enough to get people active to do something useful" sounds right.
Idealism has been dead for generations. I'm not sure exactly when it died, but every generation in living memory just used it as a cover for their unique degeneracy and self-indulgence.
I’d argue WW1 mortally wounded it
Gen X was the first non idealistic generation
What ideals did the boomers have?
“Muh personal freedom” “peace and love, man” “we’re all human” “you do you”
The ideology of narcissism and pride.
the ideals of post WW2 mythology.
I think if you asked them, they'd say they were rebelling against post-WW2 mythology. In reality, they just wanted to fuck and do drugs, and it worked for them because they were the first generation with mass contraception and a labor market easy enough that they could easily settle down once they got bored of the sex and drugs.