Right now is a period similar to the Industrial Revolution, marked by intense divisions within the ruling class over how to respond to a range of crises generated by excessively rapid economic, technological, cultural, social, demographic, ecological, and political changes, and the resulting dislocations, unrest, and instability. For example, the crisis of overproduction generated by digital capitalism and globalization, the ecological crisis generated by industrialization and modernity, and the escalating social conflict generated by demographic transformation.

The 1990s through the 2010s were the era of what I call the “Six Peaks”: peak unipolarity, peak globalization, peak neoliberalism, peak neoconnism, peak democratism, and peak totalitarian humanism. These ultra-modernist currents are now receding or being challenged by other currents, similar to the pushback from reaction and/or autocracy that have occurred at various points since the Enlightenment. “Anocracy” is the main current political expression of this trend (represented by figures like Putin, Erdogan, Modi, Netanyahu, Orban, Bukele, Duterte, Bolsonaro, Yoon Suk Yeol, and Trump, with varying degrees of success).

When these types of crises and the resulting intra-ruling divisions over how to respond emerge, different ruling class factions will begin seeking a Bonapartism of their own (see Marx’s “18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon”). More generally, overtly authoritarian ideologies will start to emerge during such crises because of a common desire for strongman leadership, quick-fix solutions to problems, and a sense of stability or security. Ruling class factions will appropriate or weaponize these ideological currents as a self-legitimating ideological superstructure for their preferred model of Bonapartism (see “The German Ideology”).

One of the principal ruling-class factions in what is broadly called the “West” (the Anglo/Norman-Zionist empire and its satellites) is TransAtlantic finance capital, whose primary base is the “professional-managerial class” (Barbara Ehrenreich) or the “Brahmin Left” (Thomas Piketty). Nearly all of what passes for the political “Left” in the “West,” from commies to centrist Democrats, is controlled by this faction via the “NGO-industrial-complex.”

The principal rival to TransAtlantic finance capital is the “national industrial bourgeoisie,” which in a US context is represented by “Sunbelt capital” (which produced figures like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan) and which has been owned and operated by the “military-industrial-complex” (Eisenhower) since the end of WW2. The primary constituency for this faction is the lower levels of capital, the petite bourgeoisie, or “Merchant Right” (Piketty). This faction controls virtually the entire spectrum of the “Right” (“conservatism,” “populism,” “nationalism,” “evangelicalism,” “libertarianism,” etc).

The digital capitalist revolution and financialization have generated additional forces beyond traditional finance capital and traditional industrial capital. “New capital” includes Silicon Valley (“Big Tech”), Blackrock/Blackstone/Vanguard/State Street, Hedgefunders, and various categories and levels of the “nouveau riche,’ which are also divided into their own left and right wings. Initially, the upper levels of “new capital” aligned themselves with TransAtlantic finance capital. Five years ago, BlackRock was pushing DEI and ESG. Telsa was pandering to the “Green sustainability” crowd.

Between the late 2000s and 2023, the alliance of TransAtlantic capital and new capital sought to weaponize the frameworks of what I call “totalitarian humanism” (authoritarian progressivism), “anarcho-tyranny” (Sam Francis), “therapeutic statism” (Paul Gottfried, Thomas Szasz), and neo-Malthusianism (Lyndon LaRouche, Caleb Maupin) as its ideological superstructure via entities like the World Economic Forum. This ruling class axis subsequently tried to weaponize the riots of the late 2010s and the subsequent pandemic as an instrument of political warfare against its intra-class rivals. This was a classic case of a “top-bottom alliance” (Bertrand de Jouvenel), in which elites sought to incite the lower orders against their intra-class rivals and constituents. Hence, the turning of a blind eye to the riots and looting of 2020, while using the pandemic as a pretext for a massive looting spree by the ruling class itself, particularly finance capital.

However, the upper levels of “new capital” have since “switched sides” and aligned with the “national industrial bourgeoisie” and, in a US context, the military-industrial complex.

The tech oligarchs see “populist-nationalism” with its trends toward anocracy as a vehicle for the advancement of their “neo-reactionary” technofedual transhumanist ambitions, with themselves as a new aristocracy. The Zionist elite among the disproportionately Jewish ruling class lurched rightward after 10/7/23 and sought to weaponize “conservative anti-woke” as a weapon against the pro-Palestine movement. That continues with, for example, the current overt Zionist capture of media entities ranging from CBS to TikTok to Newsweek. The neo-financial oligarchs like BlackRock also seek to weaponize right-wing “anti-globalism” in order to capitalize on emerging geopolitical multipolarity through integration of the Eastern and Western financial systems via the BRICS axis, producing a system of “geopolitical multipolarity, financial unipolarity” similar to the 19th century where different colonial empires maintained their own spheres of influence but were collectively financially integrated through the City of London.

At present, the alliance of the upper levels of new capital, the national industrial bourgeoisie, and the military-industrial complex has managed to eclipse the recent hegemony of TransAtlantic finance capital, similar to the way Sunbelt capital was dominant arguably from 1968 to 2008, and certainly from 1980 to 2008.

The result is a current regime with an ideological superstructure divided into exoteric and esoteric layers. The exoteric amounts to “bourgeois Christianist supremacy with nativist/xenophobic characteristics,” an ad-hoc amalgamation of populism, nationalism, conservatism, nativism/racialism, and evangelicalism. However, this is just a smokescreen. The esoteric framework is “Technofeudal transhumanism with Zionist characteristics” with neo-finance capital attempting to both integrate with and subordinate traditional finance capital. On the rhetorical and ground level application, the top-bottom model of TransAtlantic finance capital has been eclipsed by the standard “right wing reactionary” model of weaponizing the petite bourgeois and declining sectors of both the traditional elite (in our case, industrial capital being superseded by new capital) and the working class (for example, Sam Francis’ “post-bourgeois proletariat”) against both traditional “others” (outgroups) and urban, cosmopolitan elites. This is often characterized as “fascism” by the Left, but while fascists have at times used such tactics and rhetoric, it applies to a wide range of “right-wing authoritarian” currents, not just historic or ideological “fascists.”

The lumpen sectors described in the post below that are being recruited into state security forces are always eventually purged once they are no longer useful. The “Night of the Long Knives” was an extreme but representative example. And the sociocultural reactionary sectors to which right-wing authoritarians normally pander are always eventually subjugated as de facto serfs to the elites who previously incited or weaponized them. We see that at present, with efforts to eliminate or reduce the social safety net and reduce labor to a 19th-century proletarian status within the framework of an AI-driven technofeudal autocratic surveillance state.