Traditionalist Degenerates: Notes Towards a Žižekian Analysis of /pol/

A recent article on Jacobin (https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/paleocons-for-porn/)was published attempting to articulate a critique of what they perceive as the contradictions of the American new right: In one hand theirs is a culture that thrives in “porn and promiscuity”, in the other it promises a return to “traditional marriage.” Jacobin claims this is a contradiction that cannot hold; De Sade versus Burke. The purpose of this essay is to show how, far from being a contradiction that will break the alt-right apart, it is the dialectical relation between those two poles that provides insight into the psychic universe of the average 4channer, his symbolic universe is precisely the space occupied between those two opposites.

The image we have of the average 4channer as a Cheeto ingesting, Mountain Dew addicted, fedora tipping basement dweller is an image anon himself does little to dispel but in the contrary, it is the subject of ironic celebration. To understand this we have to analyze the form American heterosexual white males have been undermined in contemporary neoliberal identity politics, hegemonic liberalism tells us time and time again this demographic is “toxic.” But just as we don't judge a man by what he thinks of himself, we do not judge a man by what society tells him he is either, rather is his response to the later that really defines the man. Anon knows within the symbolic universe of today's hegemonic left he's the bad guy, so he responds by truly becoming a bad guy. But as far as bad men goes he's rather tame, useless even, and that is because he lacks the political and economic power the left insists he has. He is, after all, a neet, how can a neet be the enforcer of patriarchal, capitalist hegemony? Is this very lack of power others insists he has that feeds his paranoia, a paranoia that comes to be embodied in the fantasy of being “cucked.”

It is his obsession with the “cuck” that provides the most insight into the character of anon. He knows he has been robbed of a certain enjoyment that belonged to him by inheritance as a white male, but he doesn't know what this enjoyment might be nor who took it, not until the white supremacist comes along and informs him: this enjoyment that belonged to him, which he didn't even knew he had until it went missing, was a conservative, traditional family with a white, submissive wife, and who took it was the Jew, the Mexican, the Muslim.

But it is guilt, above all, that moves anon towards conservative politics. The old Marx's quote of: “to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner” takes a grotesque, surreal realization in the life of the neet anon: To watch MLP in the morning, play Overwatch in the evening, shitpost after dinner, and masturbate in the night. And is his masturbation habits that above all shape his politics: as far as his internet life is concerned, anon is pansexual, anything can in any moment become “fap worthy.” Is this tension between what anon finds arousing, his subconscious urges coming to the fore, and the kind of sexual life anon was subjectivized for by the ideological state apparatuses of conservative America (a monogamic, heterosexual family) that produces the authoritarian personality receptive to contemporary fascism. Anon feels guilty of fapping to feminine dicks, he's straight goddammit! If he is straight, but moved by a force he perceives as almost external to himself to partake in increasingly “degenerate” acts of libertinism (all within the safety of cyberspace, of course) then it cannot be but because he was robbed of the life he perceives as “normal” that of, to repeat myself, the traditional American family. And he couldn't have been robbed by no other forces but the ones he perceives as hegemonic in today's society: feminism, liberalism, “cultural Marxism”, multiculturalism. And the way out cannot be but with the help of a Big Other, an authoritarian superego master that tells him what must be done, the God Emperor who will simultaneously order him to stop being degenerate and also fight the forces turning him into a degenerate. Thus, contrary to what Jacobin maintains, Burke and De Sade can be said to be part of a coherent whole: Burke is the superego to De Sade's id.

Two overdetermining movements then comes to shape the 4channer as a political subject: on one hand the increasingly extreme acts of sexual hedonism come to feel more and more tiresome and jarring, they provide no satisfaction anymore, and they provoke feelings of guilt and shame (even if these feelings are repressed and hidden, subconsciously he is degraded, even if for the sake of his well being in the public space of imageboards he maintains an image of individualistic, nihilist hedonism), then there's that other possible, alternate lifestyle, the one he cannot have, but that more and more comes to be felt as the authentic sane one: being the Family Man, being at once provided with a space within the social imaginary (father, provider) and with an enjoyment (a sexual partner who is obedient to all his whims).

The irony here is lost for the /pol/ack: what he asks for, namely a place to occupy, both in the contemporary relations of production and in the social symbolic order, these are the same things missing for other marginalized communities (blacks, the LGBT community and so on) today to have a job and being a part of society is more and more, a privilege. And how anon reacts is, to put it short, to throw a tantrum, to engage in “negative solidarity” against these same communities, he refuses to see how their struggle is his struggle, how to ensure that he has a future, he must fight the late capitalist mode of production that more and more produce surplus populations, anon being, as much as he refutes to admit it, part of these same surplus populations. The left utterly failed at showing this to anon, but on the contrary antagonized him as being “toxic.” The identity politics obsessed left became accomplice to the Richard Spencers of the world, the alt-right is as much a creation of the liberal left as it is of the Nazis. The way out then, cannot be but to continue showing to anon, time and time again, how his material interests are the same as those of the black, the Muslim, the Mexican, the feminist... instead of siding with the hegemonic powers of capital, who will betray him at the first opportunity.