The Late Samuel Francis Predicted the Trump Phenomenon

[AuH20]

You knew the backlash was coming. We were just waiting for someone to embrace the mantle, even someone as enigmatic as Donald Trump.

http://theweek.com/articles/599577/...t-buchanan-predicted-wild-trump-campaign-1996

Francis on the coming storm of public discontent:

ooner or later, as the globalist elites seek to drag the country into conflicts and global commitments, preside over the economic pastoralization of the United States, manage the delegitimization of our own culture, and the dispossession of our people, and disregard or diminish our national interests and national sovereignty, a nationalist reaction is almost inevitable and will probably assume populist form when it arrives. The sooner it comes, the better…

Conservatism Inc. has always been incompatible with the cultural underpinnings of the American middle class, according to Francis:

Middle American forces, emerging from the ruins of the old independent middle and working classes, found conservative, libertarian, and pro-business Republican ideology and rhetoric irrelevant, distasteful, and even threatening to their own socio-economic interests. The post World War II middle class was in reality an affluent proletariat, economically dependent on the federal government through labor codes, housing loans, educational programs, defense contracts, and health and unemployment benefits. All variations of conservative doctrine rejected these…

Yet, at the same time, the Ruling Class proved unable to uproot the social cultural, and national identities and loyalties of the Middle American proletariat, and Middle Americans found themselves increasingly alienated from the political left and its embrace of anti-national policies, and counter-cultural manners and morals. [Chronicles]

Francis told Buchanan to go full bore radical and shed the Republican apparatus, if he truly wanted to win....

I told [Buchanan] privately that he would be better off without all the hangers-on, direct-mail artists, fund-raising whiz kids, marketing and PR czars, and the rest of the crew that today constitutes the backbone of all that remains of the famous "Conservative Movement" and who never fail to show up on the campaign doorstep to guzzle someone else's liquor and pocket other people's money. "These people are defunct," I told him. "You don't need them, and you're better off without them. Go to New Hampshire and call yourself a patriot, a nationalist, an America Firster, but don't even use the word 'conservative.' It doesn't mean anything any more."

Pat listened, but I can't say he took my advice. By making his bed with the Republicans, then and today, he opens himself to charges that he's not a "true" party man or a "true" conservative, constrains his chances for victory by the need to massage trunk-waving Republicans whose highest goal is to win elections, and only dilutes and deflects the radicalism of the message he and his Middle American Revolution have to offer. The sooner we hear that message loudly and clearly, without distractions from Conservatism, Inc., the Stupid Party, and their managerial elite, the sooner Middle America will be able to speak with an authentic and united voice, and the sooner we can get on with conserving the nation from the powers that are destroying it. [Chronicles]

Closing paragraph

What so frightens the conservative movement about Trump's success is that he reveals just how thin the support for their ideas really is. His campaign is a rebuke to their institutions. It says the Republican Party doesn't need all these think tanks, all this supposed policy expertise. It says look at these people calling themselves libertarians and conservatives, the ones in tassel-loafers and bow ties. Have they made you more free? Have their endless policy papers and studies and books conserved anything for you? These people are worthless. They are defunct. You don't need them, and you're better off without them.

And the most frightening thing of all — as Francis' advice shows — is that the underlying trend has been around for at least 20 years, just waiting for the right man to come along and take advantage.

 

[CPUd]

 

[erowe1]

I don't see how anything in the OP has to do with Trump.

 

[hells_unicorn]

The only thing I agree with Samuel Francis on in this screed is that the majority of people following World War 2 were not conservative in any economic sense, nor did they care about principles of liberty, and I'd argue that limited government was already on the ropes in the early 20th century due to the ascension of the progressive movement, if not earlier. In fact, post-Civil War American culture has been defined by a mob mentality about preserving the Union (code for Empire) and expanding its influence. We decided to take the empire from Britain following WWII, and we have since been ensnared by the corruption that comes with such power.

But Francis is dead wrong on the topic of nationalism. America has no national identity, and the concept of a proletariat is anathema to the very concept of nationalism. Nationalism is based in family, race and culture, things that waved goodbye to the colonies when the U.S. Constitution supplanted the power of state churches and governments. American nationalism as it as recognized today is little different than The Golden Horde or The Roman Empire in its latter days, completely bereft of any identity of its own apart from its power structure, and when that falls apart, the whole thing is gone.

Donald Trump is running to be Caesar, and while there may be some arguments that in the short-term he'd be a better Caesar than Clinton, Rubio, Cruz, Sanders, or Bush will not change the disastrous course that this country is on, nor change the fact that all of them will be powerless to stop the inevitable.

 

[CPUd]

The only thing I agree with Samuel Francis on in this screed is that the majority of people following World War 2 were not conservative in any economic sense, nor did they care about principles of liberty, and I'd argue that limited government was already on the ropes in the early 20th century due to the ascension of the progressive movement, if not earlier. In fact, post-Civil War American culture has been defined by a mob mentality about preserving the Union (code for Empire) and expanding its influence. We decided to take the empire from Britain following WWII, and we have since been ensnared by the corruption that comes with such power.

But Francis is dead wrong on the topic of nationalism. America has no national identity, and the concept of a proletariat is anathema to the very concept of nationalism. Nationalism is based in family, race and culture, things that waved goodbye to the colonies when the U.S. Constitution supplanted the power of state churches and governments. American nationalism as it as recognized today is little different than The Golden Horde or The Roman Empire in its latter days, completely bereft of any identity of its own apart from its power structure, and when that falls apart, the whole thing is gone.

Donald Trump is running to be Caesar, and while there may be some arguments that in the short-term he'd be a better Caesar than Clinton, Rubio, Cruz, Sanders, or Bush will not change the disastrous course that this country is on, nor change the fact that all of them will be powerless to stop the inevitable.

People in the US get their nationalism from the military, people in power who want war know how to take advantage of this.

 

[hells_unicorn]

People in the US get their nationalism from the military, people in power who want war know how to take advantage of this.

Trump's rhetoric has been tailor-made to play to this mentality by continually saying that we're "going to start winning again". The Neocons can't fight against this effectively because ultimately their worldview is based on the idea of perpetual conflict, ergo nobody wins. This is the one aspect of Trump's foreign policy where he actually differs with the Neo-cons, he's the kind of guy who'd nail another country with a massive "shock and awe" attack, but then leave it in ruins without an occupying force. This approach, comparatively speaking, is better than the Neocon-lite approach of Barack Obama in terms of optics, but it is neither non-interventionist nor pro-peace, it's simply not nation-building.

Trump's brand has more to do with FDR's imperialism than anything conservative in either a pre-WWII or post-WWII mold, which makes sense given that Trump's family made their fortune off of FDR's policies. In the short-term it may provide some benefits, but Rand and others in the the Liberty Movement will have a difficult time navigating through what is to come, just like Robert Taft did back in the 1930s.

 

[CPUd]

 

[Erazer]

Isn't Samuel Francis anti-capitalist on economics?