POPULIST STRATEGY NOTES #1

BETWEEN THE PATHOCRACY ROCK AND A MANAGERIAL CLASS HARD PLACE

From early in the history of this substack a problem has been identified for the success of populism in the age of managerial liberalism. Populism has been described as a manifestation that the ruled have lost faith in their rulers; populism aspires to a re-foundation, either in the forms or persons (or both) that rule the society. A unique set of challenges though confront a populist insurgency under the rule of the managerial class. One of these is that, through their unique class ventriloquism and their effectiveness at executing the “revolution within the form,” populism’s traditional remedy to corrupt or sclerotic rulers, the imposition of a more radical democracy, has become the Trojan Horse by which the managerial class, rather than suffering setback in its hegemony, actually consolidates and deepens its rule.

That’s bad enough, but as also discussed earlier on this substack (see here and here), the situation is even worse than that. The ruling managerial class is uniquely susceptible to pathocratic capture. Due to the similarity in modus operandi of both the managerial class and manipulative psychopaths, the latter easily blends into the the former. The political realist perspective of this substack makes this similarity in modus operandi especially troubling. Because fairy tale notions of the “people” transcending the conditions of their oppression, so on and so forth, are dismissed here as just a case of Mosca’s political formula, the only opportunity for success available to a populist insurgency is to recruit either elements of the displaced bourgeois class (see here) or a disaffected faction of the managerial class. In this historical moment, we’re probably talking about recruiting elements of the nationalist faction of that class.

The challenge, as I’ve described it elsewhere on this substack (here), is to successfully recruit that necessary disaffected faction of the managerial class, Turchin’s surprlus elite, prone to their own intra-class coup, while not accidentally allowing the populist uprising to fall into the grips of political psychopaths and paving the way for the institution of pathocracy. As the maiden post to the substack observed (here), avoiding pathocracy is essential, to avoid seeing a political movement for greater human freedom and prosperity degenerate into the worse kinds of atrocities and genocidal crimes. Given the political psychopath’s capacity to blend into the managerial class, this distinction is never going to be easy to make, even for the most sophisticated analyst, and sophisticated political or psychological analysis can hardly be assumed on the part of the populist movement. So, is there anything that can inform populist strategy which can provide the populist insurgency a marginal advantage in navigating these treacherous waters?

I would say that recent events do provide us some insight into how something like such a navigation might be preliminarily possible. I’m calling this “note #1” in anticipation of having further insights that contribute to resolving this dilemma. This first note is clearly the low-hanging fruit. Still, it seems like a valuable place to start. As you’ll see the suggestions offered here are not without their troubling limitations. It does seem though like a worthy place to start this exploration of populist strategy — to avoid the rock of pathocracy and the hard place of managerial liberalism.

As explored in the a recent post, and as I explored at greater length in my book, The Managerial Class on Trial, the sterile sounding designation of “managerial class” should not obscure the very real destructiveness, of communities and families, and bloody violence, required to institute and perpetuate the managerial class revolution. The lives of those brutalized and impoverished has had, and will continue to have, dire consequences. It is not merely appropriate, but essential for a populist insurgency to rise up against this globalist wing of the ruling faction of the managerial class. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, there is something of a world conflict presently unfolding, being fought out on many fronts (here). The populist insurgency at the heart of the countries from which these managerial class globalists wage their war is a vitally important front in this world struggle.

But, again, we come back around to the core challenge that these strategic notes need to address. How does the populist insurgency fight the globalist wing of the ruling managerial class, recruiting the surplus or otherwise disaffected factions of the managerial class for its leadership and sophistication at intellectual and psychological warfare, while not succumbing to the devious capture of political psychopaths, who would exploit this historical moment, as they have so many others in the past, to impose a pathocracy of violence and human despair? I believe that recent events in the world help illustrate at least a preliminary lesson toward such strategic considerations.

We can get there by juxtaposing the events of the Canadian trucker convoy movement and the events unravelling in Ukraine. To keep this discussion open to as many people as possible, let’s say about the latter that in that conflict one side is protecting itself from aggression. For purposes here, it doesn’t matter which side you believe is the aggressor. Is the prime story Ukraine’s invasion by Russia or Russia who had to take military action to end the constant transgressions of NATO? Again, for my purposes it doesn’t matter which side you consider the victim.¹ Because it seems likely that there have been abusive behaviour, arguably war crimes, committed by both sides. One may argue that this is the nature of war, and to some degree it’s true. But war also is a convenient venue for psychopaths to exercise the cruel dimensions of their personalities.

Let’s contrast this to the Canadian trucker convoy movement. As I noted early on, it wasn’t entirely clear whether this movement even had a leadership hierarchy — certainly not in any conventional sense of those terms. It even took some time for a spokesperson group to be identified (here). Obviously, I’m not suggesting that the truckers’ movement was ever at risk of committing crimes comparable to those in Ukraine. But it hardly requires a long memory to recall how even in North America political protest can degenerate into violence and destruction — attracting all manner of disturbed persons. If you’re unfamiliar, look into the biographies of the people who were shot by Kyle Rittenhouse. So, it’s hardly to be expected that a major political movement (and it was political, in the generic sense of the word), formed of people with years of pent up frustration and anger, won’t degenerate into violence.

One reason it didn’t was that it couldn’t be exploited the way the George Floyd protests were. This was partially because those involved in the trucker protests had a zero tolerance policy toward violence and vandalism. But I suspect it also was due to the lack of regimented leadership hierarchy among the truckers. As Andrew Lobaczewski discusses at length (see the great new edition of his book, edited by Harrison Köehli), political psychopaths gain their power by capturing influential leadership roles within a political movement. To be captured, though, a movement has to have a leadership hierarchy. What exactly would political psychopaths who wanted to corrupt the truckers’ protest capture?

When the lack of a leadership hierarchy, available to be captured, is combined with a protest culture of non-violence and passive resistance, this truckers’ movement is quickly recognized as an inhospitable milieu for pathocratic infiltration. Now, obviously, there are going to be predictable objections made to this as an effective strategy for avoiding pathocratic capture. One objection might be that the movement didn’t last very long, and if it was to be successful it would have had to eventually designated and authorized a leadership cadre.

I’m not sure that that’s entirely true, but it’s certainly a reasonable concern to express about how generalizable and ultimately effective such a strategy could be. Though, we can’t be blind to the very long term success of non-violent, civil resistance movements in the southern United States and especially in India. It’s true these movements did develop leadership cadre, which put them at some vulnerability.² I don’t think such leadership groups though were nearly as regimented and hierarchical as the more common militaristic-style social and labour movements — with all their talk of chain-of-command, and the rank and file, and fighting in the trenches, etc. I’m going to look into those topics more deeply for future posts.

It may be that the absence of a structured leadership isn’t as important for avoiding pathocratic capture as is the determination to renounce and prevent the use of violence to achieve the movement’s goals. Though of course the obvious objection to this line of strategy would be to say non-violence, passive-resistance, is all fine and good, but look at what finally happened to the truckers. Their protest lasted just as long as an outlaw government was willing to let it last. And, yes, one can look at the successes in the deep south of the U.S., or in British colonial India, but were those maybe unique historical circumstances? Did those movements enjoy a worldwide moral authority that the reality curation of the managerial class’s media oligarchs have denied to the current populist insurgency — through their various psyops and demonization?

These are legitimate concerns. I wouldn’t for a moment suggest the populist insurgency should put all its eggs into this one strategic basket, which is why this is only note #1. But I would insist that there are important lessons to learn from all this. Populist movements and protests that would push back against, attempt to delegitimize, the ruling faction of the managerial class may gain ground toward this end, while eluding pathocratic capture, if they conduct themselves in ways — non-regimented leadership and eschewing violence — that provide an inhospitable breeding environment for political psychopaths. If the latter are seeking opportunities to corrupt political movements as venues for their pathological violence and cruel rule, movements that explicitly abstain from offering such opportunities have a better chance of escaping pathocratic capture.

But, yes, more than that is needed. An information war needs to be fought and the surplus, disaffected factions of the managerial class, perhaps already prone to leading their own intra-class coup, will be a necessary part of any long term successful populist insurgency. They have the skills to fight such a information war. So, it will be essential that they are aware of the dangers — not only to their coup, but to their own long terms safety and well-being — of being alert to and prepared for the danger of pathocratic capture. Fleshing out that prospect will lead us to populist strategy notes #2, at some point, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.

1. Though it is worth mentioning that there’s a perfectly reasonable case to be made that they’re both victims. Indeed, there’s a perfectly reasonable case to be made that they’re both victims of the same globalist wing of the ruling faction of the managerial class. Fleshing that out here, though, would be an unproductive digression from the topic at hand. No doubt, though, the point warrants a post of its own.

2. Even a passing familiarity with their personal biographies suggests that neither Gandhi nor Martin Luther King Jr. were the saintly figures they’re often portrayed as in some circles, but they don’t seem to have been psychopaths, certainly they didn’t exhibit the signs of sadism all too common with other political psychopaths who have gained great power: e.g., Stalin, Hitler and Mao.