For the better part of the last decade, I’ve held a perspective that many others do not share: I see almost all contemporary politics as varying shades of liberalism. The following article was originally posted on my X account, but it is significant enough to warrant inclusion in the Substack. Here, we will explore liberalism and examine how both MAGA and the DEI cult are rooted in the same ideological foundation.
The Origins of Liberalism
Liberalism began during the Renaissance and Enlightenment, when people started questioning the power of kings, the Church, and feudal hierarchies. Thinkers like John Locke argued for individual rights—life, liberty, and property—and the idea that governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed. These ideas laid the foundation of liberalism as a political philosophy. By the Industrial Revolution, liberalism had grown into a formal ideology. Figures like Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill emphasized free markets, limited government, constitutional rights, and individual freedom. The American (1776) and French (1789) Revolutions were pivotal moments in liberal history. The American Revolution created a government based on constitutional democracy, while the French Revolution expanded the fight for liberty and equality, though not without turmoil. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, liberalism evolved into social liberalism. Thinkers like T.H. Green argued that the state should not only protect freedom but also create the conditions for people to thrive—like access to education and healthcare.
During the World Wars, liberalism faced existential threats from two opposing ideologies:
- Socialism and Communism, which emerged as critiques of liberalism’s inability to solve inequality.
- Fascism, which rejected both liberalism and communism, opposing ideas of equality and individual freedom.
The Post-War Liberal Consensus
After WWII, liberalism thrived in Western democracies, shaping institutions like the UN, NATO, and the EU. It promoted human rights, multiculturalism, free markets, and feminism, with its main enemy being totalitarian communism. In the 1960s, the New Left emerged. Former communist thinkers mixed Marxist ideas with liberalism, rejecting Soviet totalitarianism and instead focusing on cultural and institutional change within Western democracies. The New Left helped drive second-wave feminism, immigration reform, multiculturalism, early LGBT rights, the Civil Rights Movement, and secularization. Left-liberals gained influence in universities, the media, bureaucracies, healthcare, and corporations. While left-liberals shaped culture, right-liberals—focused on free markets and limited government—controlled politics. Over time, however, they began losing influence over cultural institutions.
Neoliberalism
In the 1980s, liberalism transformed into neoliberalism, splitting into left- and right-neoliberal camps. Leaders like Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Brian Mulroney, representing right-neoliberalism, prioritized deregulation, privatization, mass immigration, and free markets, while abandoning traditional social conservatism. This era birthed the phrase “fiscally conservative, socially liberal.” Conservative parties like the pre-Trump GOP, Canada’s Conservative Party, and Britain’s Tories embraced right-neoliberalism, focusing on markets over culture. The U.S., founded on liberal principles, shaped Western politics. In liberal societies, “conservatism” means returning to older versions of liberalism. As a result, most Western conservative parties are essentially right-neoliberal.
The Return of Right-Liberalism
Populist movements like MAGA, the UK’s Reform Party, Canada’s PPC, and Germany’s AfD aim to revive post-WWII right-liberalism, before the neoliberal turn of the 1980s. Figures like Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and Vivek Ramaswamy are part of this shift. These right-liberals support much of the Civil Rights Movement, second-wave feminism, and cautious deregulation, but they reject open multiculturalism. From neoliberalism, they’ve inherited Zionism and market-based policies.
Right-liberals believe in civic nationalism, or loyalty to a country’s values, not its ethnic or cultural identity. They argue that anyone—regardless of race or background—can integrate if they adopt the country’s values and citizenship. Their critique of multiculturalism focuses on groups, particularly Islam, that they believe don’t share liberal values like gender equality and secularism.
They see this as a threat to liberal ideals, rather than to their own identity. Right-liberals oppose “woke” culture and identity politics, which they view as dividing people into groups based on race, gender, or identity. They promote individualism, meritocracy (which in modernity has become “colour-blind meritocracy”, attempting to ignore or eliminate the inherent tribalism and ethnocentrism of all groups), and equality under the law instead. Modern right-liberals position themselves as defenders of classical liberal values, standing against what they perceive as the excesses of left-liberalism, multiculturalism, and nationalism.
The “Woke Movement”, DEI, and Left-Liberalism
The “woke” movement originates from left-liberals of the post-war consensus and evolved further through left-neoliberalism. While many within the movement identify as Marxists, socialists, communists, or anarchists, in practice, they operate within—and benefit from—the institutions of Western liberal governments.
Their focus differs from traditional liberalism: It shifts from equality (equal opportunity) to equity (equality of outcome).
- Their ideas draw heavily from New Left thinkers, who mixed Marxist sociology with liberal principles. Like all liberals, they believe their ideology must be spread globally to ensure the individual rights and freedoms of oppressed groups. However, this has led to contradictions:
- Left-liberals often act in authoritarian ways to enforce their vision of equity. – Their focus excludes groups perceived as “oppressors,” such as White heterosexual men, and marginally includes White women. Their key views are:
1. Civil Rights and Feminism
- Like right-liberals, they support the Civil Rights Movement and second-wave feminism.
- However, they push further into fourth-wave feminism, multiculturalism, and anti-nationalism, advocating policies that openly prioritize oppressed groups over others.
2. Discrimination Against “Oppressors”
- Left-liberalism often involves deriding and discriminating against “oppressor” groups in favour of marginalized ones.
- This includes attempting to disenfranchise these groups socieconomically, politically and culturally.
3. Managerial Dominance
- The ideology dominates Western governments, universities, and industries like healthcare, media, finance, and green technology.
- Unlike Marx’s vision of power held by capitalists or workers, left-liberalism is controlled by credentialed managers who operate within a deep state-like system.
4. Global Capitalism and Open Borders
- Left-liberalism has embraced the global capitalist system, promoting it both domestically and internationally.
- Policies like mass immigration and open borders are seen as ways to maximize individual happiness and fulfilment.
5. Equity as a Moral Imperative
- Groups that interfere with or oppose equity are viewed as threats to individual rights and freedoms, even when their criticisms are not aimed at protected groups directly.
- This creates a situation where no sacrifice is too great—even using the military to defend liberal ideals abroad, such as trans rights in foreign nations.
Left-liberalism is the dominant belief system in Western institutions today, blending liberalism with elements of Marxism to enforce a global capitalist system in a managerial regime. While it claims to champion individual rights, it enforces equity through totalitarian means, leading to significant cultural and political conflicts with other ideological groups.
Liberalism in Canada Today
Right-liberalism has limited presence in Canada. The dominant “conservative” force remains right-neoliberalism, which prioritizes free markets, globalization, mass immigration and social liberalism. Right-liberalism, as seen in movements like MAGA in the U.S. or the UK’s Reform Party, gained traction in Canada much later than in other Western countries. Its popularity only began to grow during the COVID-19 lockdowns and the Freedom Convoy protests, which forced the lifting of mandates at federal and provincial levels. The People’s Party of Canada (PPC), a right-liberal party, has expanded its reach but remains unpopular compared to the more established political forces.
Canada’s political regime functions as a loose alliance—or “uniparty”—between:
- Left-liberals, who dominate cultural and institutional spaces.
- Right-neoliberals, who share the left’s socially liberal views and often agree with them more than with right-liberal populists.
This uniparty dynamic leaves little room for right-liberalism to thrive in Canada. Canada’s political culture is shaped by its founding ideology of traditional conservatism, rather than liberalism. Canadians’ instincts often align with authoritarianism, a belief in public order, and prioritizing the common good. These values make left-liberal governance more compatible with Canadian society than the libertarian tendencies of right-liberalism. Right-liberalism in Canada, represented by the PPC, and elsewhere (like MAGA in the U.S.), faces growing challenges:
- Authoritarian Shift: As right-liberals grapple with the contradictions of their ideology, they are becoming more authoritarian.
- Populist Goals: They aim to restore the liberalism of the post-war consensus but fail to address the reality that this very ideology laid the groundwork for today’s crises.
- Cultural Resistance: In a country like Canada, where left-liberalism dominates and neoliberalism prevails, right-liberal populism struggles to gain widespread support.
Western liberalism has been the dominant belief system across western civilization for 250 years. In Canada, as in other parts of the Western world, it is showing signs of collapse under its own contradictions. Right-liberals, though offering resistance, fail to reconcile their desire for a return to older liberal principles with the fact that those principles directly caused to the current political, cultural and demographic challenges.
The Dissident Right: A New Counter-Culture
The Dissident Right emerged in the 2020s as both an intellectual subculture and a growing counter-culture. This movement draws on a mix of pre-liberal traditionalism, conservative ideas, and anti-liberal revolutionary movements. Despite being small in number, its cultural influence is disproportionately large. Much of today’s popular internet culture, memes, and references trace back to this group’s shared spaces and forums. The Dissident Right is unique in that it is the only intellectual movement that directly opposes the entire framework of liberalism—whether left or right. Its ideological diversity includes:
- Traditionalists, monarchists, and traditional conservatives.
- Neo-reactionaries and Nietzschean Vitalists.
- Post-WWII fascists and National Socialists.
- Christian Identitarians and traditionalist pagans.
- Technology optimists and Archeofuturists.
- Ethnic nationalists and racial nationalists
Their core beliefs are:
1. Rejection of Egalitarianism:
- The Dissident Right does not believe in the equality of all individuals or groups. They reject the liberal idea that humans are inherently rational and free-thinking individuals, instead viewing them as distinct groups with immutable characteristics, like race, ethnicity, culture, and sex, shaped by history, distinct evolutionary environments, and genetics.
2. Skepticism of Liberal Democracy:
- They challenge the belief that liberal democracy is the best system of governance, favouring authoritarian systems such as citizen stratocracy (rule by the military elite), constitutional monarchy, theocracy, or republican dictatorship.
3. Natural Hierarchies:
- The Dissident Right supports the idea of natural, organic hierarchies, rooted in hard sciences often considered taboo. They believe society should be led by the most intelligent, strong, healthy, competent, and honourable—but only if they belong to a male in-group, not outsiders.
4. Tradition and the Common Good:
- Like conservatives of the past, they prioritize tradition, order, public morality, and the common good above individual interests. However, they also recognize the danger of blind adherence to tradition, and many are revolutionaries in a conservative way, rather than reactionaries desiring to turn back the clock.
5. Cultural Identity and In-Group Preference:
- This group opposes assimilation policies and multiculturalism, believing that states should serve the interests of their ethnic indigenous populations rather than integrate immigrants or accommodate out-groups.
6. Religious and Theistic Debates
- Many on the Dissident Right are theists, engaging in religious discussions rooted in centuries-old traditions. While no single religion or denomination reigns supreme, a shared belief in higher order, God, or divinity is common.
Unlike right-liberal populists, the Dissident Right is elitist. They reject victim mentalities, populism as an inherent good, and liberal ideals of atomized individualism. Instead, they focus on leadership by an elite committed to the interests of the in-group, defined on ethnic, racial and cultural lines. As a counter-culture, their demographic skews toward young adults to middle-aged people, making them influential in shaping the next generation of political and cultural thought.
The Dissident Right rejects the assimilationist, globalist, and individualist policies of both right-liberals and left-liberals. They view these approaches as failures that have led to societal fragmentation and cultural decline. Right-liberal populists and neoliberals, in turn, have tried to defame the Dissident Right, labelling them the “woke right” for embracing their own identities rather than dissolving them, as liberal ideologies encourage, right or left. Wether the Dissident Right will evolve into formalized political ideologies, parties, or centres of power remains uncertain.
For now, they remain a highly influential counter-culture, shaping internet culture and questioning the very foundations of liberalism.
