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The Right’s Weird New Age
Taki's Magazine ^ | February 12, 2025 | Steve Sailer

Posted on 02/12/2025 5:08:01 PM PST by Pelham

With the left depressed in 2025, much of the cultural energy belongs to the right. But where’s it going to go?

One increasing possibility appears to be that newly self-confident right-wingers are getting into various kinds of New Age woo, the occult, gnosticism, RFK Jr. junk science, paganism, Indian esotericism, Chinese numerology, health food fads, etc. In other words, all the old craziness satirized by Umberto Eco in Foucault’s Pendulum, plus some new innovations like AI cults and God knows what else.

G. K. Chesterton supposedly said, “The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.” (Note that Chesterton never quite said that: This most famous Chestertonian epigram is actually an admirably succinct paraphrased summation of G. K.’s train of thought by his admirer Émile Cammaerts.)

The current right-wing coalition between tech bros and chuds opens up all sorts of possibilities, both highbrow and lowbrow.

For example, Silicon Valley is into psychedelic drugs lately.

And much of New Age is motivated by physical discomforts suffered by aging humans, which they like to blame on poisoning. Hitler blamed race poisons, others blame seed oils and microplastics.

(Excerpt) Read more at takimag.com ...


TOPICS: Humor; Miscellaneous; Society; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: fad; newage; sailer; woo
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Yet, generally speaking, in the English-speaking world, this sort of stuff has historically been associated with the left, with the friends of Chesterton’s great frenemy George Bernard Shaw. Down through the generations, the left has been more associated with the Big 5 personality trait of “openness.” Shavian socialists drove George Orwell, a leftist with a rightist pro-chud personality, crazy, as Paul Laity notes:

“Socialism,” George Orwell famously wrote in ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ (1936), draws towards it “with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist and feminist in England.” His tirade against such “cranks” is memorably extended in other passages of the book to include “vegetarians with wilting beards,” the “outer-suburban creeping Jesus” eager to begin his yoga exercises, and “that dreary tribe of high-minded women and sandal-wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers who come flocking towards the smell of ‘progress’ like bluebottles to a dead cat.”

1 posted on 02/12/2025 5:08:01 PM PST by Pelham
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To: Pelham

Just more projection from the Left...


2 posted on 02/12/2025 5:18:18 PM PST by BuchananBrigadeTrumpFan (If in doubt, it's probably sarcasm)
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To: Pelham

WTH? None of this is true at all.🤣🤣🤣🤣


3 posted on 02/12/2025 5:19:36 PM PST by dforest
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To: Pelham

this guy is an idiot


4 posted on 02/12/2025 5:20:29 PM PST by SendShaqtoIraq ( )
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To: Pelham

This dude needs a break from that weed he’s smoking....


5 posted on 02/12/2025 5:25:33 PM PST by clee1 (We use 43 muscles to frown, 17 to smile, and 2 to pull a trigger. I'm lazy and don't wish to smile.)
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To: clee1

Everything is on the web—thousands, even millions of sites that cover all sorts of topics—and many of them are on our side politically.


6 posted on 02/12/2025 5:29:39 PM PST by cgbg (The Democrat Party is a criminal enterprise.)
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To: BuchananBrigadeTrumpFan

Taki’s is not left wing.

The publisher Taki Theosomething long and Greek cofounded The American Conservative magazine with Pat Buchanan.

Also wrote for Bill Buckley back in the 70’s.

But he does hate lowbrow culture.


7 posted on 02/12/2025 5:30:06 PM PST by Valpal1 (Not even the police are safe from the police!!!)
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To: SendShaqtoIraq

too much ouzo!


8 posted on 02/12/2025 5:30:08 PM PST by Reily (a)
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To: Pelham

“Outer-suburban Creeping Jesus” would be a great name for a thud rock band.


9 posted on 02/12/2025 5:33:34 PM PST by Noumenon (You can evade reality, but you cannot evade the consequences of evading reality. KTF)
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To: Pelham

He might be right about this for all I know. What he says comes from the social circles he’s part of, but he makes the mistake of assuming “everyone” is into this. He said that several times. These may be trends among people who “count”, but I don’t see much of it as a member of the hoi polloi.


10 posted on 02/12/2025 5:39:48 PM PST by Southside_Chicago_Republican (God save the United States!)
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To: Pelham

“For example, Silicon Valley is into psychedelic drugs lately.”

Lately? In the early 80s a company I worked for chip designers was using LSD ‘to improve their circuit layouts and visualize novel approaches’.

Their ad campaign featured Alice in Wonderland.


11 posted on 02/12/2025 5:43:57 PM PST by null and void (I hoped it was the Bee but it’s California.)
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To: Southside_Chicago_Republican

The tone I’m reading is he’s searching, brainlessly, for any way to disparage MAGA.


12 posted on 02/12/2025 5:44:20 PM PST by reasonisfaith (What are the personal implications if the Resurrection of Christ is a true event in history?)
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To: Pelham

I think he missed the core of MAGA, which is truth and righteousness.


13 posted on 02/12/2025 5:45:29 PM PST by reasonisfaith (What are the personal implications if the Resurrection of Christ is a true event in history?)
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To: reasonisfaith

Could be.


14 posted on 02/12/2025 5:46:53 PM PST by Southside_Chicago_Republican (God save the United States!)
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To: Pelham
Hitler blamed race poisons, others blame seed oils and microplastics.

And archeologists suggest that the use of pewter in drinking vessels hurt the health and mental capacity of well-to-do Romans. Sometimes these theories have something to them.
15 posted on 02/12/2025 5:59:59 PM PST by Dr. Sivana ("Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye." (John 2:5))
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To: BuchananBrigadeTrumpFan

As usual.


16 posted on 02/12/2025 6:07:30 PM PST by No name given ( Anonymous is who you’ll know me as)
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To: clee1

Big time!


17 posted on 02/12/2025 6:07:43 PM PST by No name given ( Anonymous is who you’ll know me as)
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To: reasonisfaith

Obviously.


18 posted on 02/12/2025 6:07:55 PM PST by No name given ( Anonymous is who you’ll know me as)
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To: SendShaqtoIraq

💯.


19 posted on 02/12/2025 6:08:05 PM PST by No name given ( Anonymous is who you’ll know me as)
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To: BuchananBrigadeTrumpFan

Neither Steve Sailer nor Taki are on the Left. Taki in particular provided Buchanan a place to get published.


20 posted on 02/12/2025 6:29:32 PM PST by Pelham (President Eisenhower. Operation Wetback 1953-54)
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