Curtis Yarvin: “In the conflict between authoritarian populism (us) and elitism (them), it is clear that if we are to play an offensive game, the battle should be fought on their turf. The ideal place for the battle is therefore the minds of the elites.
Fashion and ideas will always trickle down from the elites to the common people, so the populism of the “silent majority” is inherently ephemeral – the fashion of the elites cannot be well defended. The best defence is a good offence: destroy their confidence in their own ideas and institutions.
This would be harder to do at this point, because Western ruling elites have no ideas or ideals, but it is a brilliant observation nonetheless. Even when popular movements criticise and hate the elites, they adopt whole patterns of thought from them. Hence my frustration and dismay, which I have expressed repeatedly on this site, as I gradually discover that what I once described as the behaviour of the new aristocracy (the globalist oligarchy), all the stupidity and mob fanaticism, is being belatedly adopted by the “alternative”. This is probably the fate of any popular movement unless it is linked to a counter-elite capable of providing other models.
Second. How do you fight for the minds of the elites? Obviously there is no point in fighting for the minds of George Soros, Kamala Harris or Ursula van der Leyen. But there are tens of thousands of people in lower leadership positions, mostly fanatical, but educated and intelligent, sometimes even sophisticated. Their minds should be fought for. When the anti-Islamic movement was very successful in the Czech Republic many years ago, we were intuitively aware of this. That our movement had to be more educated and more interesting in its thinking, and that it had to be a class above the people working in Aspen, Czech TV, NGOs around the mainstream parties, etc. It must be clear that we are the real elite, not them. But we didn’t recognise the latter. Saying clever things is not enough if you cannot show power, wealth and opportunities (i.e. connections to sponsors or other powerful forces) with them.
Hopefully future revolutionary movements will realise this.