To make people Right-wing, reflect on what made you Right-wing ⭐
Table of Contents
- 1. Hearing about political issues other than what leftists emphasize.
- 2. Learning economics.
- 3. Basic economic history.
- 4. Ancient Indian history.
- 5. Aesthetics and articulation.
- 6. Omnibus posting.
- 7. Seeing authoritarianism/atrocities by modern leftist parties, and institutions’ “bias”.
- 8. Atrocity literature.
- 9. Baba Niṣāda’s wisdom
One way to answer “How can we make people more Right-wing?” is to ask ourselves “What made me Right-wing?”—and then replicate that at scale.
It is easy to forget that we live in a “high-context” bubble, that not everyone has the same context or information we take for granted. This often leads RWs to inadvertently dismiss large swathes of the public as irredeemable—after all, if they already know all the things you do, then there’s nothing you can say to them to redeem them. By Auville’s agreement theorem, they must either be irrational or evil.
By contrast, left-liberals take a mindset of “educating” or “informing” people.
[Not just left-liberals actually, but also all the religions of yore. There’s a reason why education has always been inextricably tied to religion—whether Vedic studies and Buddhist monasteries in classical India, the Universities of medieval Europe, the Madrassas of the Mohammedans or Leftist indocrination under the Left-liberal Rāj.]
In part because they really are completely secure of their beliefs, seeing it as objective truth—and in part because unlike RWs who are either one-microissue normies or complete junkies, libs tend to largely be midwits who are themselves on that journey of learning “how can I be a better leftist?” and so the question of “what made me left-wing?” is constantly on their minds.
So what were the pivotal movements that made you right-wing—and more important, what were the pivotal moments made you a better right-winger?
I shall start.
1. Hearing about political issues other than what leftists emphasize.
E.g. when I was 8-10 years old my father told me his favorite PM had been PVNR, and the reason had to do with something called “Economic Liberalization”. This was completely foreign to me! I had thought that political leaders were good if they did things like increasing “Equality” and “Democracy”, fighting “Oppression”. This provides the first crack in a Totalizing Ideology.
2. Learning economics.
Starting with Milton Friedman videos. Learning to “think like an economist”.
3. Basic economic history.
Basic memes like:
- 99.9+% of wealth was created in the past 200 years by capitalism and the industrial revolution
- the pre-modern peasant’s life sucked: famines, disease, no electricity, slow and dangerous transport, having to do everything manually so couldn’t do anything interesting
- GDP per capita is basically income, so it measures everything money can buy
4. Ancient Indian history.
Either studying it in detail (as I did), or every detail of it being made omnipresent in the cultural aether by those who did. Note the emphasis on “detail”: I don’t mean well-known things about kings and dynasties—but detailed information about truly-neglected things: like trade guilds and corporations in ancient India, chemical mixtures described in various ancient texts, Indian and Indo-Sogdian merchants and missionaries who dominated the Silk Road. And stated in a purely factual way, not with pointless emotionally-loaded words like gLOrY and SpLEnDoR.
Pre-1970 history books are especially good for this, as they retain the imprints of the old “Faustian ideological aether” which has since been replaced by a Leftist ideological aether.
Make people understand that (as cliche as it sounds) their civilization is worth fighting for.
5. Aesthetics and articulation.
This isn’t so much relevant to my own “what made you RW?” journey, but from me observing the opposite in other people (reaction to bad aesthetics).
I knew someone, a slightly liberal-leaning normie, fairly smart and RW-curious. Joined Twitter and followed a few well-known RW people. Soon after, ran kicking and screaming away from the right, yelling WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?? HOW CAN YOU BE RIGHT-WING, THESE PEOPLE ARE CRAZY! THESE PEOPLE ARE DISGUSTING Looked at her Twitter feed, and found, that by the grace of the algorithm, her feed was entirely populated by the posts of our dear (I wish I could say one-and-only but he’s not) Śrī Śrī Śrī Rīṭārḍ Abhijit Iyer-Mitra.
People are repelled by the right for its poor aesthetics.
6. Omnibus posting.
One reason I was exposed to a lot of right-wing arguments early on is that I used to read a (now erased and deleted) certain blog that posted very interesting things on math, and also hard, hard-right politics.
When I started reading that blog, the politics used to put me off—but it was so seamlessly interweaved with the math content that I was essentially forced to pay attention to it.
Liberals do this at a much larger scale, by the way: I have a thread on this:
7. Seeing authoritarianism/atrocities by modern leftist parties, and institutions’ “bias”.
Hearing about communists’ atrocities doesn’t really do it anymore, because it feels like long-gone history.
But authoritarianism from modern leftist movements remains omnipresent, as does their blatant capture of the institutions and should constantly be emphasized.
8. Atrocity literature.
As I have said before:
Outside of very-online people like us, people need to constantly be reminded of what we’re fighting for and why.
It’s about tattooing “Kalpana was Killed” on our chests. We have suffered atrocities, and we will avenge them. Both must constantly be stressed.
All three are important:
- /māna//pride: ancient history, knowing +ve self-identity that is worth fighting for; avoiding subvertibleness
- /manyu//indignance: atrocity literature, knowing why we’re fighting
- /vīrya//will: inspiration from previous reconquistadors; will to power now.
Maurya, Mughal, Maratha. You must know all three.
All successful mass-movements strike a balance between atrocity literature and victoriousness.
Communism, Left-liberalism, various Islamist movements, Zionism, Hindutva.
“We have been oppressed, but we are now rising up and will prevail” Every piece of propaganda must include both.
9. Baba Niṣāda’s wisdom
Mostly what matters is
- thinking with genuine desire for truth rather than
- rationalization (justifying consensus beliefs so you can fit in)
- comfort (coping or adopting simplistic memes that make you feel good and angry) or
- big-braining (trying to come up with crazy theories to feel smart)
- tuning your receivers to seek the highest-signal info sources, prioritizing signal over all else
- repeatedly asking yourself “are you sure that’s true? how much would you bet on it?” and catching yourself when you start going down dumb rabbitholes
- total irreverence (This is not the same as disrespect even though they are synonymous. Yes I know “same” and “synonymous” are synonymous but they are not the same.)
Like the equilibrium of war is peace, the equilibrium of self-questioning is confidence.
(though to be clear all of this questioning should be done within oneself or in private spaces, not publicly where vultures lurk)
As for my path specifically I would say -> libertarian background/understanding economics very well -> became totally anti-left. -> got interested in history from reading about the agricultural revolution. That + reading Hindu philosophy gave me total clarity on philosophical moral foundations/anthropocentrism. -> interest in Indian history -> engaged in Indian RW circles -> made me realize how ingrained leftist memes are in the culture (aka the “Leftist Ideological Aether”) -> what also helped was reading historical accounts by one civilization of another etc which made me adopt the same anthropological lens toward modern culture -> witnessing blatant authoritarianism of leftist govts everywhere toward RWs + the Yudhiṣṭhira behavior of RWs -> realized the total dominance of the Left over every institution (aka the “Liberal Raj”) -> increasingly saw the same patterns of Leftism in Islam, and gained total clarity about them after the anti-CAA riots -> discussions with @ShazCoder helped clarify for me the gears-level of how the Left gained and maintains such power, as well as on our own guys’ psychology and motivations
I will note that the starting points (libertarianism + Indian history/philosophy) will not necessarily drive everyone down the same path. The former had me initially critical of BJP for “using the same tactics as the left” (understanding the Liberal Raj + reading Kautilya turned me 180 degrees around on this). The latter almost drove me to a mild form of V1 caste kanging (eating chia seeds and reading @TheEmissaryCo fixed my brain).