I’ve made it such a priority to combat the ideas of “Bronze Age Pervert” because these ideas are pivotal tools in the ruling-class scheme to perpetuate financial barbarism. With help from Edward Luttwak, the IDF-linked geostrategist, BAP has been putting forth narratives that are specifically designed to capture the men who’ve been left behind—whether economically or in their ability to access basic relationships—by the upheavals of 21st century capital. And if this part of the younger generation is lost to the far right, the next phase in the American empire’s breakdown will be one where society becomes more fractured, creating an enormous obstacle to working-class solidarity.
The elites seek to turn America into a lumpenized country, with conditions comparable to Haiti’s; but Haiti has the hope which comes from a popular revolutionary movement, and America could come to have the same advantage. If America’s left-behinds get pulled into ruling-class psyops, the outcome will be a further atomization of our society, letting our rulers continue and expand on their genocidal schemes.
Most within Gen Z understand that capital’s crimes, especially the Gaza holocaust, cannot be ignored. And a growing number of conservatives recognize this as well, with a certain amount of the audience that BAP aims for seeing Zionism as an abject evil. This anti-Zionist and antiwar awakening on the right has definitely limited BAP’s reach; but when you look at the dynamics of today’s discourse, and how dissent gets captured, it’s apparent that somebody like BAP can still do serious damage towards revolutionary progress. In the case of BAP, the danger is that ruling-class propaganda will be what comes to define important parts of a generation’s collective path, replacing the revolutionary consciousness that had the potential to come about.
As it becomes clear upon reading Bronze Age Mindset, BAP advocates for men to respond towards their alienation by embracing hyper-individualism, even more than our culture has already encouraged them to. Bronze Age Mindset is truly a manifesto for doubling down on boomerism, and translating its self-focused tendencies to an age where these values have already done catastrophic harm to our society.
This is apparent simply from how BAP promotes self-betterment in the face of an engineered societal collapse, while actively rejecting the working-class struggle that can actually defeat the power of finance. BAP points out how our world is being torn apart by international bankers, then glorifies agents of finance, like Paraguay’s CIA-allied dictator Alfredo Stroessner. He uses the rhetoric of revolution, while promoting the ultimate kind of reformism by saying the three-letter agencies are where the most important battles will be fought. This is a variant on the position of Nick Fuentes, who calls for his followers to become feds in order to change the system from within.
None of this is surprising when you’re familiar with the patterns within “rightist” politics, which always ends up falling into the exact same stagnation and complacency that it claims to oppose. The root of this problem is that “rightist” politics fundamentally aim to defend the existing order, rather than seeking to advance humanity towards the next phase of development. And pointing out this contradiction helps us combat these “rightist” psyops; but to fight against them directly, we have to genuinely understand which ideas they’re drawing from.
I have talked a lot about how Hitlerism grew out from anarchism, as it shares anarchism’s belief about the illegitimacy of the state; and the same applies to BAP. And this is a good way to discredit Hitlerism, as it exposes the shallow and bohemian nature of the fascist worldview. With BAP, though, there is a conscious effort to distance the right from fascism and the “Jewish question,” which BAP views as being distractions from the right’s core goals. Of course, these goals are themselves incoherent and contradictory; but it’s not enough to point out the hypocrisy of rightism, we need to also show why the class struggle is superior to what the rightists have to offer. Which, when you look at the content of their messaging, is easy to do; we win against the rightists by showing how the concrete process of dialectics, embodied in workers struggle, always wins against the right’s metaphysical notions about genetics.
The essence of BAP’s argument is that genes are the defining factor in whether an individual or a society will thrive; BAP goes to great lengths to build the case for this idea, and he uses the tactic of juxtaposing his argument next to poor arguments from his opposition. He points out the inconsistencies within the vulgar materialist view of biology, which claims that evolution is nothing but a coldly random process of competition; and this critique is similar to the Marxist critique of Darwinism, but BAP makes it for a different purpose. He argues that evolution has a tangible meaning because he seeks to promote a eugenic worldview, in which the highest mode of human achievement is one where individuals become conquerors who rise above the rest.
This romantic notion about men going their own way is at least how BAP and his handlers market their deeper message, which in practical terms advocates for a restoration of turn-of-the-century politics. This is the part of history that BAP really aligns with, not the Bronze Age; if the Bronze Age Mindset were to truly win out, it would look like a return of both early 20th century social policies (like eugenics), and the model for imperialist war that the United States initially embraced. This fits with the direction our ruling class has been going in with Trump 2.0, where it’s bringing back the protectionism of William McKinley.
This is going along with a return of the methods for colonial aggression from McKinley’s war on the Philippines, which Trump next seeks to inflict on Venezuela and Mexico. And eugenics is gaining more relevance within ruling-class politics, though in a different form than it had during the past; today, eugenics is coming through in the war our elites are waging against the working class, where the economy is becoming ever-more “degrown” and the underclass is getting pushed out of the most basic opportunities. It’s this ruling-class scheme that’s led the men in BAP’s target audience to become left-behinds, yet the objective impact of BAP’s politics is to advance that scheme. The real impact of rejecting class struggle, and of embracing individual empowerment quests that don’t challenge the system, is to let finance capital accelerate its assault against us.
It is useful to expose these hypocrisies within “rightism,” because doing so will let us turn a certain part of the next generation away from this thinking. To make our counter-messaging truly effective, though, I believe what we must do is demonstrate how successful Chinese socialism has been. I credit Jackson Hinkle with leading me to this conclusion, as he’s recently been hammering home the argument that China’s accomplishments prove communism works. If we learn how to communicate this and other class-conscious ideas in a highly accessible way, like Jackson has, we will overpower whatever psyops our enemies come up with.
There’s a reason why BAP says that he “would rather ally with the leftist hipster than with China”: it’s China that exposes the dishonesty of BAP’s attempts at discrediting Marxism, and that proves how foolish it is to be nihilistic about workers struggle. China is the ultimate proof that the path forward is to join the proletarian cause; if we can communicate this to the current and next younger generations, we will win this narrative battle.
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