Sensible Centrist Podcast – Episode 6: The Court’s Sense

SCP#6

In this episode, I have a discussion with The Court’s Sense, a German-American Substack writer and YouTuber who has made some fascinating and insightful content about elite theory, ideology, aesthetics, and the state of this online space.

We debate the dynamics of the online Sensible Centre, elitist vs populist dynamics, what makes a substansive ideology, and how Wokeism can be defeated.

Timestamps

• Introduction, and how Court started making political content – 00:00 – 01:42
• Why I call myself a ‘Sensible Centrist’ – 01:43 – 3:10
• How Court’s Sense defines himself politically – 03:11 – 04:26
• How I sympathise with Court’s feeling he hasn’t got his ideology entirely worked out – 04:27 – 04:58
• Why Court’s Sense thinks pessimistically about the current moment of triumph from the MAGA movement – 04:59 – 08:31
• Why is appealing to both ‘elite human capital’ and the base so hard, with appeasing one alienating the other, and how are dynamics today different from the era prior to the internet? – 08:32 – 12:15
• We discuss how the freedom of the internet is a ‘double-edged sword’ for building a movement, the establishment can’t gatekeep you, but you can’t gatekeep cranks – 12:16 – 15:19
• What is a ‘crank’ to somebody might be a valuable coalition partner to another – 15:20 – 17:07
• Can there be a consensus on the ‘Sensible Centre’? – 17:08 – 18:27
• How Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter/X did dumb down the discourse and made it less elite-coded, and why I think the Catholic postliberals are the faction which have the most potential to be a successful vanguard – 18:28 – 19:33
• Trump in 2016, by deliberately offending elite sensibilities which endeared him to the base, made the elites more resistant to alternative ideas – 19:34 – 21:00
• Court agrees that the Catholic postliberals have strong advantages over other factions, but argues that Christianity’s decline will mean its base is small – 21:01 – 21:53
• I argue that whilst postliberalism is rooted in Catholicism, its arguments aren’t explicitly religious, and that the only two true alternatives to Wokeism are ethno-nationalism (which can’t apply in America), or some form of conservative Christianity – 21:54 – 23:28
• Court says that because he is personally not religious, he would struggle to get behind an explicitly Christian movement, but I say that I’m also not a believing Christian, yet I think for America there is no alternative – 23:29 – 25:50
• Why non-ethno-nationalist ‘secular rightism’ is basically just Vitalism, and I why I moved away from it – 25:51 – 27:02
• Why I don’t think ethno-nationalism works in America since the Ellis Islanders – 27:03 – 28:55
• Court asks if Neoreaction can serve as the ideology, but I argue its not a substantive ideology, at least not in the sense that people are prepared to die for it, but a means of political analysis and understanding of power that can be applied to a multitude of different ideologies – 28:56 – 30:50
• The basis of Court’s thinking is ‘whatever makes a society stronger is good, whatever makes a society weaker is bad’ – 30:51 – 31:44
• How Christians have appealed to me using Aristotelianism, and how Aristotelianism might be able to bridge the gap between Christians and non-Christians – 31:45 – 33:00
• Court argues there are some universally recognised virtues that all traditional cultures share – 33:00 – 37:06
• I point out that no culture or civilisation has a right to survive, just like a species has no right to not go extinct, and it’s a very real possibility that Europe could die because of mass immigration and Boomer pathology (‘those whom the Gods intend to destroy, they first make mad’) But as a European, I would strongly prefer that doesn’t happen, and we do survive – 37:07 – 38:42
• Why I pity German self-loathing, and realise that Woke Anglo elites want us to feel the same degree of suicidal guilt – 38:43 – 40:07
• How is one able to build influence in elite circles without being either cancelled or forced to sell out completely, and when does the ‘tactical counter-signal’ work? – 40:08 – 45:07
• Why Court thinks the turning point will be demographic collapse – 45:08 – 46:33
• Returning to the subject of elite vs popular appeal, what made me admire Walt Bismarck was his essays ‘How the Alt-Right Won’ and ‘I Want to Create an Alt-Right 2.0’. Whilst, the incentive structures being as they are, we may not be able to win the majority of ‘elite human capital’ to our side, there is a big difference between 1% and 20% of that group, and you get to the 20% by cutting out the cranks and sticking to the core issues – 46:34 – 49:13
• Court gives the example of the Bolsheviks under Lenin as a strategy the Sensible Centre could follow – 49:14 – 52:40
• Why I’m not an accelerationist, and why spaces like The American Postliberal are sort of being that intellectual vanguard – 52:41 – 54:14
• Court distinguishes his brand of accelerationism from the overly black-pilled kind – 54:15 – 56:01
• Why both Court and Eric Kaufmann give uncomfortable and pessimistic truths which I hate reading because they make me depressed and angry, but which I nevertheless admire because it is important to understand where we are – 56:02 – 57:38
• Court talks about how he would not be satisfied with ‘90s liberalism’, and I talk about my previous podcast with INRI_07 which discussed what ‘Putting the Woke Away’ actually means – 57:39 – 58:15
• Court asks me what I think is the driver of Wokeness. I say ultimately the ‘Boomer Truth Regime’ – 58:16 – 59:31
• Court doesn’t believe Wokeness is an ideology, but instead an expression of cultural decay – 59:32 – 1:00:46
• Why I’m suspicious of talk of Spenglerian cycles – 1:00:47 – 1:01:17
• I discuss Court’s writing/videos about Francoist Spain, both the ‘unification decree’ and whether authoritarian repression in the United States could permanently crush Wokeism – 1:01:18 – 1:04:43
• Digression about how the Spanish Civil War was ‘cool’, how it was the ‘Super Smash Bros’ of 4chan political ideologies, and I point out the Syrian Civil War was somewhat similar – 1:04:44 – 1:07:17
• We continue our debate about the character of Francoism – 1:07:18 – 1:11:54
• Court argues that Franco’s ‘Unification Decree’ killed idealism from both the Carlists and Falangists. I strongly prefer the Carlists to the Falangists, but point out they did have significant common ground in their Catholicism and Spanish Nationalism, whereas the modern Anglo ‘Sensible Centre’ has much less overlap, with Trump the only thing holding it together – 1:11:55 – 1:16:12
• Why institutionalising an anti-liberal regime is so important, and why I devote considerable attention to it. Court discusses how institutionalisation can corrupt, giving the example of Mexico, but overall agrees – 1:16:13 – 1:19:59
• Why I have fun designing hypothetical political systems, and continue to argue why I think it’s important. I also very broadly discuss my ideal political system – 1:20:00 – 1:24:40
• We discuss the role of technology, Ted Kaczynski, and technology-facilitated centralisation – 1:24:41 – 1:30:34
• Closing – 1:30:35 – 1:30:57