There is something eerie about living in what can only be described as a “transition period” in history. This could have been said for the 1840s and 1850s in the United States as the increasing tension between two diverging cultures could not share the same government and were escalating from skirmishes to war. Or perhaps in the blossoming of progress and prosperity in the second industrial revolution, one could smell the changing scent in the air as their outhouse became a toilet, and their candle became a lightbulb. There is often a foreshadowing of things to come, and if there is anything intellectuals are good for, it is seeing those signs and intuiting the possible outcomes.
Watching AfriForum’s Selfbestuur, this feeling of being in a historical transition period seems to finally be coming to a close. The endless theorizing and ruminating among rightist thinkers finally seems to be bearing fruit in a very real way - the only way something like this can ever come about - necessity.
Necessity for change is what relinquishes attention and legitimacy paid to government. Inertia only develops when the problems your nation faces seem at best managed and at worst ignorable. People are governable when there is inertia. However, when the ability to meet the material needs of the people becomes a challenge, and infrastructure can no longer be maintained the general mood of sloth begins to shift to wrath. Many fingers are pointed, but the inertia can no longer last. Status-quo begins to have less meaning as time passes with more and more drastic paradigmatic shifts that become more and more ephemeral and unpredictable. Acceleration.
When you have perpetual brownouts, persistent murders of specific races of people purely out of spite, a government that denies said murders and then proceeds to inhibit any ability for autonomy and self-governance, and has been persistently known for corruption and nepotism, passivity is going to rapidly shift into activity. Such is the case with South Africa, where the attempt at a centralized government has led to the aforementioned results. Their infrastructure is in tatters, and innocent Boers are being murdered, while the central government and federal police do absolutely nothing about it.
This has spurred the creation of AfriForum, whose prime goal is to push for legislation and action that benefits Afrikaner interests in South Africa, as they are persistently left behind, neglected, or outright persecuted by the South African government. The well-produced documentary mentioned above, hosted by a good friend of the Dissident Right, Ernst Von Zyl (Conscious Caracal), elaborates on how much better off the regions of South Africa would be if they had more recognized autonomy. Using the example of South Tirol in North Italy, for over fifty years this majority-Austrian province has benefitted financially and culturally from its own autonomy, rather than being subsumed into the whole of Italy. This would undermine their culture, likely force them to pay more in taxes to the ailing parts of the nation that are corrupt and culturally completely dissimilar.
In the case of South Africa, this situation is amplified where all provinces are treated essentially the same by the central government which leads to ill-preparedness when the Zulus decide to start rioting, or Boers are murdered by resentful psychos. Tack on the brownouts. And even though only 20% of the Western Cape votes for the ANC - the party responsible for such corruption, scandal, and anti-white action - they have control over the police, energy distribution, criminal justice, the whole nine yards.
What solves problems like this except decentralization (federalism)? Well, that is exactly what is starting to happen. Where the national government completely fails in every way, the Western Cape has begun to make headway, specifically in terms of instituting their own police force. Out of 30 places where crime has decreased in South Africa, 29 have been in the Western Cape.
I’ve only gone over a few very basic examples. I highly recommend the documentary for a further look into why decentralization is better. One can easily come to the conclusion that a leviathan of a government with too much to tend to in proportion with its abilities will collapse. It’s only a matter of time.
But that is what brings me further towards the metaphysical situation at hand. This documentary, AfriForum itself, how clear the answers are - I feel as if the paradigm shift is now. The central government of South Africa is collapsing in on itself only thirty years after its creation. It can hardly handle the maintenance of its infrastructure, let alone the forced unity of completely immiscible cultures. The strong cultures of South Africa are already building strong walls to defend their people, infrastructure separate from the central government (Orania is a perfect example), and building strong bonds and spiritual strength among people who are ready to go to bat for their cultures. This stands as a testament to the truth that the neolib-constructed world order is starting to fall apart. South Africa stands as one of the strongest examples as neoliberal success. In the 1990s with Mandela being propped up by all the usuals - Blair and Bill - and it all led to what? The Rainbow Nation?
And now we have countless other examples in Africa, South America, Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. Or yanno, the ailing European Union, culturally-bankrupt Japan, an increasingly unprosperous, stagnated United States. The experiment keeps failing, and those who are competent - rejected from the system or simply not given a good enough reason to stay within - will build one of their own. And what can the powers that be do? Stomp them into the ground? Or simply allow it if they pay their taxes? It is more of a hinderance to attempt to destroy competent systems that are doing nothing but maintaining order in place of a lack of it. There is simply a lack of accountability. When you have that, the system will die of exposure. So what comes of this in other cases? It’s fun to speculate, even though it is quite difficult.
Perhaps just as South Africa portended the failure of the ultimate rainbow nation, it will portend the first real robust decentralized nationstate where the lies of neo-liberal line-go-up capitalism are discarded in favor of culture and communities. Any good kingdom is built on communities that are tended to, loved, but kept orderly and accountable.
If there is to be a future, it will look a lot like how South Africa is going to look:
- Descent of centralization.
- The rise of federalism or confederalism for the survival of the state.
- The central government will not be able to put up a fight nor have any interest in doing so.
- The creation of well-guarded decentralized autonomous states will likely lead to repudiation of internationalism and the usurious and evil aspects of unchecked capitalism.
(You can already see what I’m thinking about if you’re familiar with my stuff.)
The development of Orania is a mighty prophetic sign for any astute observer of rising political and economic trends. For those unfamiliar, Orania is a community in South Africa built by and for Boers as to avoid persecution. Even though they are in the desert, have little access to food or water, purely through the urge to survive, they have built a home. A home that is first world, and yet communal.
We can already see similar shifts in the West as people move to homesteading, homeschooling, and return to Christianity, in the face of what seems to be institutional persecution and incompetence. My older friend and coworker even remarked how young people seem to be much more likely to be traditionalist and skeptical of liberal institutional power. The signs are developing here, albeit the move towards widespread, recognizable decentralization is nascent. Those who do not believe me, then please take a minute to review how many parents are moving towards homeschooling, and how this will likely bring about an entire generation of kids not hopelessly addicted to porn, video games, social media, and other fleeting vainglories. There is an oncoming generation of real trads whether you like it or not. They will be inherently robust and unafraid of standing up for their family, culture, community, and religion. They are literally the only ones having kids.
This is going to have a butterfly effect over this century that, and we are just beginning to see the seeds actually bloom. The time of “transition” is starting to shift into an actual paradigm that is clearly separate from its predecessor. The essence is taking form; the previous self is being negated. This new paradigm will be one of likely restlessness and division, one of activity and rabble-rousing, one of spiritual revivals and cults. The homesteading and shire fantasies, while lovely and quite achievable on a certain level, are not going to be achieved overnight. And these fantasies clearly borne of a yearning within the culture itself to be unlinked from the oppressive zeitgeist of perpetual progress and hedonism. There is a reason this wasn’t happening in the 1980s, even though we had insane crime and terrorism. We were still a culture desiring economic prosperity and progress. And now that that has borne nothing but a spiritual malaise, and the economic fruits have begun to spoil, decentralization is already being desired and taking place.
It might not seem quite as blatant as in South Africa, but that’s why South Africa is such a palpable example of things to come. It is the best blatant example of the failed neo-liberal, melting pot, line-go-up experiment. I am excited to see how the Boers singlehandedly give us the model on which to build our foundation.
Please do check out this documentary. It’s surreal to see a documentary that has such a political and spiritual message of determination, and a healthy mix of optimism and realism.
“The machine is a tool. But it is not a neutral tool. We are deeply influenced by the machine while using it.”
Jaques Ellul
Using the basket weavers (#Texas channel chads rise up) has to be among the best ways we can already build these initial communitarian bonds, developing our own little pockets around Texas and continuing to introduce more people to our way of thinking/life.
Thus as we further embed ourselves in these communities, through business, work, Church, local politics/government we can readily make a change and develop our own forms of Orania here in the US.