Revolution from the Middle
The Insurgent Disposition
In 1976, sociologist Donald Warren published a little-known book with the title The Radical Center: Middle Americans and the Politics of Alienation. Among other things, this fascinating work described a developing class consciousness among the middle class wherein it was perceived that there was an institutional bias in American power centers toward both the coastal liberal elite, as well as the lower classes.
The upper-class economic elite—dominating the world of high finance, media, academia, and other institutions of influence (what James Burnham referred to as the Managerial Elite)—had teamed up with those on the economic margins of American life such that the top and bottom rungs of society were working in tandem. It was the middle classes that saw themselves as bearing the raw end of this new political dynamic in America.
Such a dynamic caused these Middle Americans to flock toward political figures like George Wallace, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, and most recently, Donald Trump. Frustrated by the increasing lack of political focus on their own interests, priorities, and struggles these Middle Americans began, in the post-Civil Rights era, to “radicalize’ against the establishment. These “Middle American Radicals,” (MARs) as Warren calls them, “are distinct in the depth of their feeling that the middle class has been seriously neglected. [Government is now] favoring both the rich and the poor simultaneously.”
It is important to note, however, that it was one of the great contributions of the paleoconservative student of power relations, Sam Francis, to understand the unique cultural element at play here. Drawing on the lessons of the Italian leftwing and Communist agitator Antonio Gramsci, Francis realized the extent to which a conspiracy between the “rich and the poor” against the financial middle class doesn’t really tell the whole story. After all, by the time the late 1980s came around and the Soviet Union’s Marxist experiment had completely collapsed, it was a full decade after the publication of Warren’s book; what was happening in America could not be construed in the limited framing of mere economic materialism.
Pat Buchanan was prescient when he spoke in 1992 of America’s tension being that of a full-fledged Culture War. The strategic partnership at play in American political life was such that the liberal elite could bolster their own power by appealing to the dynamic of an oppressor-oppressed relationship wherein the oppressed would be made up of groups like ethnic minorities, repressed women, practitioners of sexual abnormalities, and even the urban poor (though never the rural poor—emphasizing the cultural aspect of these victim groups).
This partnership in political upheaval was strengthened by a myopic legislative agenda that focused on righting alleged injustices by harnessing efforts toward immigration equalities, the expansionary bureaucratization of civil rights, and the submerging all of American cultural life in the ideology of victimhood, emancipation, and overcoming the past.
While it was obvious and explicit who the sanctioned oppressed groups were, what very few were able to grasp was the implicit fact that it was not the “elite” who would be the oppressors against whom political society would wage its weapons of social justice. Rather, it was these very “Middle Americans.”
It was for this reason, just as much as the economic factors, that the forgotten and betrayed Middle Americans have gone through ebbs and flows of what has been described as a “radicalization” process. In recent decades this has only become much more explicit. The radicalization of the Middle Americans has them now calling into question the very legitimacy of America’s Left-occupied institutions and therefore, in increasing ways, they advocate for any sustained action or demeanor that undermines the Regime. Francis therefore emphasized throughout the late eighties and early nineties that MARs are those best thought of not merely as the “Middle Class” with reference to a certain annual income, but as those citizens who made up the core of American cultural life in our once quite bourgeois-dominated society. It is for this reason that I constantly refer to these MARs as Heritage Americans.
Middle Americans are those who may or may not have gone to college, largely held regular blue-collar jobs, mostly represented the ethos of the American Heartland—away from the postwar radicalism of the West and East coasts. They are those whose roots in America extend back into the pre-Ellis Island era and they identify with traditional American social mores and regional customs and would assert the goodness of America’s historical experiences. They are fond of America’s folk history, cherish its heroes and legends, and largely see the post-Civil Rights cultural-entertainment apparatus as deeply subversive of the American spirit. They are not very ideological; they are unimpressed by Washington D.C.’s halls of power, suspicious of the rule of credentials and expertise, and disinterested in grand visions of the socially engineered remaking of American society.
They have a disposition that makes them cynical about the pursuit of universal human rights, and they would rather see the restoration of their own cultural patrimony than an American- facilitated liberal democracy bequeathed to some foreign people group (either in America through migration or elsewhere in the world by American expansionism). Middle Americans are the ones that prioritize the maintenance of their way of life, desire to be left alone by the coastal elites, and identify much more with memories of folk and kin than with postwar America as an ideological engine of world transformation. They understand instinctually that America was a place and a people, an inherited social order, not a propositional nation. As Michael Lind and Samuel Huntington have both rightly discerned, nations may possess aspirations and political propositions fitted to themselves, but the nation is not thereby synonymous with said propositions.
In the culture war, the Middle Americans would become the antagonists against the politically favored—they would become the new cultural proletariat. Thus, the Middle American Radicals who seek to express their frustrations do so not in terms of mere financial woes—though there is plenty of that too— but also in terms of the perceived liquidation and decimation of their heritage, folk symbols, and cultural artifacts (flags, dress, music, heroes, historical narratives, architecture, etc.). It was being liquidated by a liberal elite that despised Folk America, dismissing them with labels such as “Deplorables.”
This liberal elite fostered its culture war on the MARs by upholding and culturally encouraging the sexual degenerates, racial revolutionaries, radical feminists, anti-Western Third Wordlist’s, and various collections of those who operated politically in terms of their own group interests—interests, of course, that could not be synchronized with Heritage America and the sociological universe of America circa the 18th century through early 20th century.
In 2024, the tensions inherent in this meta-struggle between the MARs and the elite-victim partnership have exploded. Precisely what Warren anticipated, and what paleoconservatives like Sam Francis and Pat Buchanan identified early on, has now become a predominant aspect of our political dynamics. The trouble, of course, is that the Republican Party—so often a betrayer of the MARs whom they depend upon for electoral success—and the Democratic Party alike represent factions of the elite-victim partnership, and there are few (though certainly none with real, institutional power) whose instincts line up with the forgotten MARs.
The result of this is that America’s old popular majority, displaced by Left- radicalized, well-educated white liberals and tens of millions of third world immigrants, is becoming intensely agitated—even more so than they were in the 90s. The difference this time around seems to be that the younger, emergent right wing—fans of Buchanan and the ethos of Heritage American over against the postwar liberal consensus—are no longer interested in sustaining the American system as it presently exists. While the patriotic response to 9/11 was able to quell the nerves of the MARs in the early 2000s, it is quite clear that there are no longer any events that could convince the radical right that the true enemy is abroad and not here at home. The new MARs therefore operate in a state of complete spiritual severance from all representation in Washington. This is a significant historical moment.
Failure of the Conservative Movement
Among the Conservative Movement’s fiercest critics were those paleoconservatives who were adamant that what they call “Con Inc.” had failed in its most rudimentary political mandate: to defend the interests and way of life of the people it swore it existed to represent. Among these paleoconservatives, few are as controversial as Sam Francis. Yet whatever else may be said about Francis, it’s hard to think of a figure who so deeply understood the failure of conservatism in America in light of the Left’s decades-long march through all the Institutions. The Left was so successful in its total occupation of American cultural life by 1990, Francis would observe, that the entire multi-million-dollar Conservative enterprise was operating on the framing and moral universe of this Leftist political gestalt. Francis therefore had a much darker view of what was happening socio-politically than what could be found on tap at the conferences, conventions, rallies, and fundraising events of Conservative Inc. While Conservatism was selling a sort of cheap optimism on the premise that America’s institutions were robust, eternal, and unconquerable—despite some temporary setbacks due to Clinton’s successful bid for the White House—Francis and his fellow paleoconservatives were warning that the institutions were presently waging war against the very people that most passionately believed—and needed to believe— in their integrity. This sort of lie, Francis would viscously point out, was homicidal in nature: if the Left was intent on terminating Heritage America, it was the conservatives who functioned to prevent anyone from doing anything about it.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Francis and the paleoconservatives—among whom is my own primary influence Paul Gottfried—began to articulate a strategy against the Left that can be referred to as a Revolution from the Middle—directly referencing the disaffected MARs. Francis, along with Pat Buchanan, Paul Gottfried, and others (such as the eminent right-leaning libertarian Murray Rothbard) were ruthless against the neoconservatives who had ventured into the Republican Party from reformed Trotskyite and Liberal origins. They called them out not merely for being too soft against the Left, but for accepting the Left’s consolidation of the Managerial State, the expansion of the perilous logic of the Civil Rights revolution, and, importantly, for purging the conservative movement of its would be stalwarts such as Joe Sobran and Mel Bradford.
It is important to note that there were others who were indeed legitimate conservatives in the older, pre-neoconservative sense, such as Russell Kirk and Roger Scruton, who exemplified a superior outlook on socio-political affairs than the liberalized neoconservative establishment. These traditionalists were not neoconservatives, but neither were they paleoconservatives in the same sense as Francis and Gottfried and others—though in many contexts they worked and wrote together.
The difference had somewhat to do with political strategy and the tactics of political activism. But this difference in strategy was derivative of much more profound differences in interpretations as to the socio-cultural state of emergency that characterized America at the end of the twentieth century.
Whereas both the Traditionalists and the paleoconservatives completely dissented from the propositional nationhood and political universalism of the conservative establishment, dominated by neoconservatives, the traditionalists sought a strategy of reinvigorating our belief in the old ways, praising the permanent goodness of American institutions, and calling for electoral participation to reassert a conservative influence in Washington. It called for a return to the old Constitutional order, an embrace of the Bill of Rights, and an assertion of the goodness that remained in the American system.
The Franciscans (as Rothbard once called them), on the other hand, developed a much bleaker view of twentieth century developments; arguing that the institutions had been already captured, the Heritage American ethos and its memory was being liquidated purposefully, and that our moment called for a posture of political insurgency, rather than the mere reinvigoration of the Western imagination. In other words, the hour in America was far later than the traditionalists wanted to admit, we must face the dark prospects that the civilizational enemy already held the reins of power, and that they were intent on humiliating Middle America unto their socio-economic death. The solemn implication of this, completely unacceptable to the Conservative establishment (optimism is better for aggregating donations), was that our time called for a hard politics of friends vs. enemies, rather than a soft politics of universal principles and the marketplace of ideas.
One of the problems with the typical Conservative strategy that Francis was prescient to emphasize is that their defense of American procedures and institutional norms could only be meaningful if they controlled the institutions that they were seeking to sustain. But once the Left had affected its institutional capture, conservatism’s entire ideology limited their own activity to the very constitutional norms that the Left delighted in subverting and avoiding. In other words, Conservatism was so committed to its constitutional norms that it had no means of waging war against an enemy that could hardly be bothered to care about America’s old constitutional constraints. Conservatism therefore was at a dead end by the 1980s.
In Francis’ context of the Reagan and Bush years, Francis noted that already the Conservatives were
“[D]ashing onto the political playing fields designed by the architects of Leviathan… [P]olitical conservatives had to play by their rivals’ rules in their rivals’ game, so it shouldn’t be surprising that conservatives wound up with pretty much the same thoughts and values that the architects have and wanted them to have.”
Now, thirty years removed from the height of paleoconservative activity, it becomes increasingly clear that Sam Francis has been thoroughly vindicated in his sustained indictment of the Conservative Movement. Not only has the Conservative Movement failed in its mandate to preserve the ethos of Heritage America and the interests of Middle America, but it has joined the side of the cultural Jacobins within the Managerial State that seek to facilitate the completion of the Left-liberal extermination of old America.
Thus, the Conservative Movement has failed and, significantly, conservatism can henceforth no longer be the proper disposition for the Right. As Garet Garrett noted in 1938 about the post-New Deal world: “There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.” Today’s conservative defenders of a world that has already disappeared have no framework for the political world as it currently sits.
The Insurgent Mentality
What Middle Americans Radicals need now more than ever is something that continues to bother the leaders of Movement Conservatism; namely, the posture of an insurgent who operates at the margins of political society, and who has no actual representation within the Power Elite. That is to say, they should learn, as Sam Francis himself did, from prior examples of theorists who contemplated the path from a place of no power, to a place of political hegemony—such as Antonio Gramsci. If the American political structure caters to clusters of special interest groups, and if MARs or Heritage Americans are now largely left out of this dynamic, it makes no sense to operate with a conservative posture. If we are to demonstrate our fealty to the traditional American people and their way of life, we must refuse to treat those in power who seek our destruction as anything other than enemies against whom power should be wielded.
The most fundamental implication of this is that Heritage Americans need to adopt a sort of counter-revolutionary consciousness. This means we must treat the Regime as being made up of our enemies, rather than something we pledge allegiance to; after all, we do pledge allegiance to the very America that the present Regime daily repudiates. We must be deeply suspicious not of holding power, but of those who presently hold power. We must not pretend like the American Regime operates in the best interests of us Heritage Americans but rather seeks to fleece us on behalf of its clients. As Auron Macintyre has pointed out on numerous occasions, “Americans are not so much citizens of a country as tax cattle farmed for wealth to be retributed to the client classes of the ruling elite.”
Moreover, we must come to terms with the fact that the postwar ideological consensus is a delusion that veils the realities of identity politics: politics in 21st century America—once we look past the myths of individualism, merit, liberality, and democracy—consists in a clash of group interests organized along lines of who you are and the culture you represent. The classical liberals lambaste the Critical Theorists for their doctrine of intersectionality, but do not the media, the academic institutions, the entertainment outlets, the bureaucratic agencies, the billion-dollar non-profits, the massive banking conglomerates, and the technology corporations all operate on behalf of groups organized around cultural identity? Politics in America has already adopted the dynamics of Lenin’s “Who, Whom?” political framework—the great question of present-moment politics is “who will conquer whom?” What it means to adopt a counter- revolutionary consciousness is to become a realist about how power actually functions in America; to defend your family and your people against other groups agitating for domination. In this sense, “identity politics” is a matter of cultural and political survival, and universal individualism is a path toward cultural death.
Developing a demeanor of political insurgency also implies that much of our lives must be thought about in light of long term socio-political objectives—who you form group bonds with, who you do business with, the place you live, the communities you build, the spouses you marry, the children you raise, the careers and vocations you pursue, the investments you make, the churches you attend, the clubs you form, the media and cultural artifacts you consume, the political activists you organize with. All these things must be construed in terms of retrieving and rebuilding a way of life that upholds the goodness and nobility of Heritage America and the Middle Americans that want to honor it. Adopting a counter-revolutionary consciousness means that you need to structure your life in terms of future orientedness and in anticipation of the increased politicalization of our future.
That is to say, adopting a counter-revolutionary consciousness means that we refuse to submerge ourselves into the deracinated “Trash World” that is being constructed for us by both those in formal power, and also those in the so-called “market economy.” We henceforth engage in power and economy with the primary purpose of arranging for our people a better future—not a life of consumptionism. Everywhere we go, we must abandon the Boomer generation’s milieu of narcissism, immediate comfort, and cheap optimism based on material pleasures: we operate for our people, for our cultural inheritance, on behalf of “ourselves and our posterity,” to borrow a phrase from the Constitution. We have our own long road to march—and it is animated by our commitment not to some Utopian future, but to the reassertion and reaffirmation of our own past. The counter-revolutionary consciousness does not shrink back into the caves but pursues strategic engagement where all of life—as much is possible within our own constraints— is centered around the interests of reinvigorating Heritage America.
Finally, we should study the strategies and tactics of others who have come from a position outside political dominance. For Francis, one of the most important theorists happened to be the Italian activist Antonio Gramsci, among the pre-eminent post-Leninist theorists of Communist strategy in the Western world. Gramsci, imprisoned as a Marxist revolutionary in Mussolini’s fascist regime, spent his remaining years writing out his Prison Notes (yes, edited there by Pete Buttigieg’s father), much of which spent time engaging a complete restructuring of Marxist strategy, in light of the communist frustrations in the West.
Because of the particular nature of Western cultural life (as compared to Russia’s cultural life on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution), Gramsci recognized that Western political power was not merely a matter of control of the state—but also rested on control of the cultural institutions. Gramsci offered up the strategy of the building of a parallel culture, parallel institutions, and parallel communities that would operate outside the Western hegemonic cultural apparatus. They would grow independently, be nourished by their own momentum and attractiveness, and eventually be in a position of strength as compared to the archaic culture of Western past. In Crane Brinton’s Anatomy of Revolution, he described this as the formation of an “illegal government” which would operate parallel to the legal one.
Brinton elaborates:
“The legal government finds opposed to it, not merely hostile individuals and parties…but a rival government, better organized, better staffed, better obeyed. […] At a given revolutionary crisis they step naturally and easily into the place of the defeated Government.”
In other words, the creation of parallels precedes the actual capture of power and then later, once the power has been seized, the revolutionaries would simply substitute their own parallel institutions in the place of the old.
The problem that ultimately undermined Gramsci’s application of his strategy was simple: the American Left in the 50s and 60s could not pull off such a strategy because the American core was still basically conservative, disinterested in the counterculture and frankly annoyed by the parallel communities they sought to construct. The Gramscian strategy would not be successful as above articulated. Thus, the next generation of Gramsci-inspired culture warriors went a different route: it took the “Long March Through the Institutions.” That is, rather than creating parallels, it sought the method of subversion, catching a sleepy and recently victorious postwar America passive and self-satisfied with its total Western domination. We now sit on the other side of that cultural revolution, with the Long March having substantially succeeded in every facet of American cultural life… except one: the MARs have not converted.
And in fact, they have become emboldened against this revolution; even if they don’t recognize it as a revolution, as something that had been planned and executed. If Gramsci’s strategy of parallels couldn’t work because Heritage America was too firmly impressed into the hearts and souls of Middle Americans, then our own Right-Wing counter insurgency—on behalf of this betrayed Heritage America—can leverage specifically this bastion of old America. It is precisely here that Sam Francis can help us understand the strategy of a Revolution from the Middle. Our greatest strength, as Heritage Americans seeking to reassert Heritage America, is that our counter-revolution can be built upon the continuously radicalizing Middle.
As Francis noted, “beneath the encrustation of the dominant cultural apparatus of the left in this country there still persists an enduring cultural core of traditional beliefs and institutions.” And yet, despite the fact that there still remains a core that has stayed committed to Heritage America, this core has at present basically no one representing it within the apparatus of the state. At every level of government—county, state, and nation—the machine works on behalf of the basic instincts of either Liberalism or Leftism.
Thus, the moment calls for the creation of parallels—networks of support, production, protection, employment, spiritual and physical development, and so on—all of which must be explicitly catered to the ethos, aesthetic, and spirit of Heritage America and self-consciously outside the debased and cratering Managerial system. It also calls for counterinsurgencies at attainable levels (rural counties being a predominant example) and the formation of blocks of self-conscious MARs fighting for space to operate fortresses that can be mobilized into bases for future attacks.
Conclusion
One of the most important domains for parallels is the integration of this concept with the very real and legitimate county level governments in rural America—primarily in the American Heartland—away from the Leftist-dominated perimeters of the United States—where Old America still has a heartbeat. Here, radicalized Middle Americans who are aware of the Franciscan model of political dynamics can help to bolster the strength of the Heritage American core by treating more central jurisdictions with the same socio-political disdain that the liberal elite treats the MARs.
The insurgent disposition thus must be coupled with the political will to banish at local levels the spirit and influence of the Managerial elite; tremendous opportunities will present themselves to the Middle American Radicals when they begin to think like counterrevolutionaries in politically driven cultural warfare, rather than citizens with an equal standing before a Constitutionally structured government. They must abandon the cheap optimism of Feel-Good political messaging that drove the post-Reagan conservative establishment; they must instead identify with each other as Friends, over against the Enemy that occupies the American Regime. Only by adopting this approach to socio-political life—from positions of independent fortitude—can they wage their own Long Counter-Revolution, a “Counter-Hegemony” in the words of Gramsci.
Image Credit: