Red Lines in the Sand: Defining Our Side
It has been one year since my debut essay on MEON where I warned our side about being co-opted by corrupting forces. As I wrote back then, “the Irish nationalist movement, while anchored by historical continuity, is an outgrowth of the general western populist reaction.” In the aftermath of the great “Fell for It Again” year of 2025 (i.e. Trump’s betrayal of populist ideals), the general western populist reaction is confused. For the past two decades, right wing coded motifs floated on the surface of this reaction but with Trump’s betrayal, these surface level motifs are distracting from the underlying substance of why the populist reaction occurred. Thus, I will attempt to define this substance to clear up any confusion. I will draw red lines in the sand that get to the crux of matters and do away with surface level appeals to right or left wing shibboleths.
To reiterate, the “side” I refer to is not a narrow parochial one of nothing more than crude slogans aimed at small-minded goals. I refer to the transnational antithesis to the dominant order presiding over the West. This antithesis is a set of ideals articulated by intellectuals that eventually get manifested in rhetoric for the masses, whether of a cultural or political nature. If a movement does not hold the line on ideals, its downstream cultural and political outputs will be corrupted. It is even more troubling when those who take part in a movement don’t even know what their ideals are. If you have a problem with any of this, Reddit and Elon’s slop pen are down the hall and to the left.
Ideal One: Against Might Makes Right
Populists desire national sovereignty. Nationalists don’t condition this desire with qualifiers that they must pass or fail to justify their nationalism. It is not about size, development level, GDP, or military power. Populists rest their argument on the moral principle of national self-determination. It is inherently derivative of Christian civilization best expressed in Luke 6:31, where Jesus said, “do to others as you would have them do to you.” If one desires sovereignty for his own nation, he must respect that others hold that same value for their own nations. One refutes his own legitimacy to national sovereignty when he supports transgressions of others’ national sovereignty.
In a more modern rendition, Pro-Treaty Arthur Griffith wrote, “Ireland and the Empire are incompatible…one cannot trample on the rights of other people and consistently demand his own.” The men who fought and died for the cause of an independent Ireland believed in this moral principle. They didn’t see other struggles as alien or distracting from their own. Anti-Treaty Eamon de Valera highlighted foreign nations like India, Egypt, and Persia all had common cause with the Irish and was made an honorary chief by the American Chippewa Indians. Irish nationalists unabashedly supported other nations fight against empire because it was the moral and pragmatic thing to do. The more allies one has against a common enemy the better the odds one has of defeating the enemy. Unfortunately, some empty headed grunts strikingly believe in the counterintuitive maxim “the enemy of my enemy is my enemy” against all wisdom of history and the illuminating proverbs of warrior-poets. If one believes in the anti-Christian philosophy of might makes right or is too shallow to comprehend the ramifications of apathy on this question, they should stop participating on this side. The global American empire has plenty of room for them.
Ideal Two: For Economic Sovereignty
Populists reacted to the effects of deindustrialization, financialization, offshoring factories, importing cheap labor, rent extraction, and speculative malinvestment. These are fundamentally caused by the presiding oligarchic economic system. One must challenge this to have any hope of meaningful remedies to these problems and equally not get tripped up by anachronistic scaremongering about socialism.
Again, the Christian perspective answers this for us. To question of if capitalism should be the model countries should follow, Pope John Paul II said, “if by ‘capitalism’ is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative.” Pope Leo XII said, “the mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.”
Even Griffith made similar qualifiers of capitalism. He wrote, “There is no greater existent danger to civilisation than the growth of capitalism, the accumulation of the world’s wealth - or what men are pleased to consider wealth, and starve amidst plenty for lack of - in the hands of a few, and a cataclysm similar to that which overturned the Roman Empire awaits civilisation if the aggregation of wealth and power by the few...proceeds unchecked.” If you harken back to a nationalist identity, like that of Griffith, or a Christian identity, like that of the Popes, then you must reckon with their actual statements and ideological underpinnings. Too often alleged populists cosplay these identities without any underlying grasp and expression of their teleology.
It should be clear that the terms capitalism and socialism provide an insufficient dialectic. The inherent dialectic that transcends this fake one is really that of populace vs. oligarchy. When we speak of sovereignty, we implicitly refer to the populace’s sovereignty over that of oligarchs and foreign powers. Thus, any policy that enhances the populace’s sovereignty and diminishes the latter groups’ control is good. This enables populists to pick the best policies from each side and apply them depending on the problem they face. If one tries to create barriers to this through regurgitating Cold War semantics incubated in a Washington DC cocktail party, then they are preventing populists from attaining their fullest expression of sovereignty which is upstream from economic prosperity and security. In most cases, these types only put up these rhetorical obstacles because of their personal ambitions to claim their own 30 pieces of silver.
Ideal Three: For Organic Culture
The prior two ideals complement this final one. Populists want an organic culture. This is culture grown from the ground up. It is one of families and communities. It’s one not trodden by imperial excesses nor hyper-consumerism under the guise of “economic logic.” The common mass migration critique of populists is an example of this desire for an organic culture. However, mass migration is foisted on subject nations because of the former causes. America’s imperial apparatus uses its iron fist to wage wars across the world that pushes migrants out of their own countries while also using its velvet glove to pull migrants into the West. Further, the American-centered yet transnational oligarchy desires mass migration for cheap labor and to increase consumption. Taken together, a populist must oppose these imperial and oligarchic forces to protect his organic culture.
Organic cultures are eroded the more that subject nations are contained within the imperial construct. If you find the “woke mind virus” irritating, it is not your local libtard to blame but the overwhelming presence of Hollywood-led traditional media and Silicon Valley-led social media that is overconsumed throughout the West. Once these foreign imports are regulated and crowded out by domestically produced media, organic culture will flourish and the artificial one will shrivel up. Too often though, alleged populists can’t see this full picture. They neglect the ultimate sources of the manifestations they dislike. They also champion the adjacent imported commoditized politics thinking the presentation of “choice” is demonstrable when they truly appear to be debating the merits of Cool Ranch vs. Nacho Cheese flavored chips both produced by Doritos.
Lining Up
If these three ideals are cemented into the consciousness of those on our side, there should be no trouble. These three ideals can be applied to deduce answers to any specific issue. Should you support America’s next invasion? No, that conflicts with ideal one. Should you support foreign companies monopolizing your country’s market and resources? No, that conflicts with ideal two. Should you support propaganda made outside your country? No, that conflicts with ideal three. Hopefully, these ideals also serve to blast away the faux right and left dialectic that distracts our side. It is not about being left or right, but who holds to these ideals. These are the red lines in the sand. Stay or cross.