Rudyard Lynch: How World War I Built the New World Order

YouTube ^ | Feb 17, 2026 | Dad Saves America

[ProgressingAmerica]

Rudyard Lynch, host of “WhatIfAltHist,” explains how World War I turned Western civilization against honor culture and paved the way for the bureaucratic states of the 20th century. In the aftermath of mass mobilization and industrialized trench warfare, Woodrow Wilson’s vision of the global technocracy began to take shape, coming into full force after the even greater devastation of World War II. The organic, honor-based social order of the old world gave way to a managerial system that wields power by creating its own reality.

[ProgressingAmerica]

This guy is generally brilliant in his insight and understanding about many of these historical contexts.

[ProgressingAmerica]

Some of you are fond of promoting the fake ideal that we live with the Civil War and/or its aftermath in profound ways today.

We do not. The Civil War came, it went, and it was influential for a decade or 3 tops. After that, CW lost all relevance whatsoever. It’s just a footnote in books, nothing more.

We live with the aftermath of World War I and we have lived with this boat anchor for over 100 years. Progressivism is America’s Cancer.

[MMusson]

The current order is based upon WWII and the US plan.

[ProgressingAmerica]

It is not. The entirety of FDR’s schemes were extensions of Wilsonian managerial machinations and have precious little difference from them.

[ScaniaBoy]

Thanks for posting. I haven't had time to watch it yet, but I will tonight. I agree with the premise of the video, as you describe it.

I guess the author of the video looks at the history from a US point of view. He could just as well have used the history of the EU. The “father of the European Union”, Jean Monnet, was very anti-democratic and pro-managerial. He meant that the WWI was due to the popular forces in Europe pre-WWI, and therefore to avoid a repetition the major countries, or Europe in its entirety, would have to be ruled by professional bureaucrats. This is why - according to my view - the EU can never be reformed. It is built on a very anti-democratic base.

One does not have to know that much history to see how weird Monnet’s world view was. Prior to WWI how much power did the parliamentary parties in Austria, Russia, Germany wield? Even Britain entered the war without even a single debate in the House of Commons. No, the one primal catastrophe of the Western world, WWI, was not due to popular demand (although once the war was declared there were initially some patriotic demonstrations in most of the involved countries), but to inept handling of a political crisis by the people in power.

To understand how much the shadow of WWI still affects Europe one only needs to look at the constitution of the European Union. To a very large extent it is a copy of the League of Nations(!!). Not that many Europeans have any inkling of that.

Also, the first industrialised war made it necessary to shape the managerial states, given that during 4 years so much of the production had to be run in a way to keep the war effort going. And once the bureaucracies had been formed those who ran them were never letting go after the war. That is unfortunately the inheritance we still live with.

[Bulwyf]

FDR was a raging commie. Why did Americans at tbe time suffer him?

[cowboyusa]

Worst President ever.

[cowboyusa]

Ironically, The South was strongest for him, and New England was the weakest. Everything has flipped.

[Pelham]

For some of us, the Civil War and the Revolution both are part of our family history and influence what we think.

Your indifference inclines me to believe that neither involved the ProgressingAmerica clan.

[DiogenesLamp]

Some of you are fond of promoting the fake ideal that we live with the Civil War and/or its aftermath in profound ways today.

We do not. The Civil War came, it went, and it was influential for a decade or 3 tops. After that, CW lost all relevance whatsoever. It’s just a footnote in books, nothing more.

Anchor babies.

[DiogenesLamp]

Also Abortion and Gay marriage.

[ProgressingAmerica]

Hah. I don’t know about any such clan.

All I know is that the managerial state has no roots backward past basically the year, basically, 1900(Progressivism is deceitful, it never announces itself). The managerial state, with managerial “experts” living in these unelected bureaucracies and regulations as far as the eye can see.

That is,

Progressivism. The managerial class was eventually nice enough to give itself a name, which gave us the ability to call out this evil by its name.

Otherwise, every street and every avenue, every boulevard, and even every alleyway - almost all of them end with Woodrow Wilson. Some remaining roads and the dirt roads lead to Teddy and the bull moosers. It is in fact true for example that the progressive GOP is guilty of giving us the 16th amendment.

At the end of the day you have to find ways to cross rugged mountains and even oceans to get to the Civil War. The disconnect from everything is profound.

[ProgressingAmerica]

"Anchor babies."

1898.

[Pelham]

Teddy Roosevelt made two speeches while President in favor of an Income Tax Amendment. William Howard Taft signed the bill that would become the 16th Amendment, which was written by GOP Senator Norris Brown.

The 16th Amendment was ratified and became law in February 1913, a month before Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated President.

Wilson won the 1912 election mostly because Teddy decided to run on the Progressive Party ticket, splitting the GOP vote between himself and Taft, who ran on the Republican ticket.

The Republican Party had a large Left wing from Lincoln’s day, the Radical Republicans, right through 1912, which people today seem to know nothing about. Oddly enough the Communist Party knows this history, and sometimes laments the GOP as “the party that got away” after what in their mind was a promising beginning.

The Republican progressive wing began drifting over to the Democratic Party during Wilson, and many former Republicans ended up with prominent roles in the administration of Teddy’s cousin FDR.

Wilson gets blamed for a whole load of policies that often originated in the GOP, thanks to Glenn Beck and Dinesh D’Souza, neither of whom seem to know anything about the Republican Party’s history in creating progessivism.

[SunkenCiv]

...paved the way for the bureaucratic states of the 20th century. In the aftermath of mass mobilization and industrialized trench warfare... The organic, honor-based social order of the old world gave way to a managerial system that wields power by creating its own reality.

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[Joe 6-pack]

I’ve seen a number of Lynch’s videos. I don’t necessarily agree with all his conclusions, but there’s no denying his intellect and depth of knowledge.

[daniel1212]

Am i to understand that a premise is that totalitarian nations would not arise seek to dominate and expand unless deterred by a superior (in terms of government and power) nation? That hyper-isolationism is rational?

[ScaniaBoy]

I’m sorry but I don’t understand your question. I don’t think I wrote anything about the rise of totalitarian nations. I thought the video was about the loss of freedom in the democratic western nations post- (or peri-) WWI. Unfortunately I haven’t had time to watch it yet, so I’m as uninformed today as I was yesterday. :-)

Of course the rise of totalitarianism was another inheritance of World War I. I think most non-marxist historians are in agreement that the rise of the totalitarianism in the Soviet state was integral to the Leninist ideology, and the Communists were given the chance to take power due to the disastrous state of affairs in Russia due to the war.

[ProgressingAmerica]

"The Republican Party had a large Left wing from Lincoln’s day, the Radical Republicans, right through 1912"

No.

You and others rely too much on this hoax. It doesn't follow through. There is very little "left wing" about Rutherford B. Hayes in the context you mean, as he ended, not continued, reconstruction.

That's you guy's big bugaboo, right? Reconstruction? Why did Hayes end it then if he's so left wing? And the congress of that era. Why did they end reconstruction if they were such committed ideologues as you like to claim?

See, you guys don't want to answer these questions and others like it. You think you can just spout propaganda unopposed, like nobody can see your great huge grand canyon.

And what about James Garfield? Why didn't he try to revive Reconstruction; being so ideologically tied to the proposition? Ok, I guess he got assassinated. And ideological Chester Arthur? Ideological Benjamin Harrison? The ideological members of the gilded age congress? And William McKinley was not very progressive, it was his veep TR who was the hardened big government statist.

You guys have no answers for the big gulf inbetween the civil war and the progressive era and the missing ideology you claim is so glaringly there.

It always comes back to this.

You can't cross this canyon. You have to make it up out of whole cloth.

You should have a way to come up with a 30-point bullet list of how all these things are directly related to progressivism, and you can't. The only one you've got is a mis-reading of the 14th amendment, which isn't related to a war over slavery or war over economics anyways.

(1865)There was no civil war over abortion. There was no civil war over school prayers. There was no civil war over anchor babies. There was no civil war over gay marriages.(1865)

The Civil War's influence lasted 10 to 20 years, tops. And then it was dead. It was dead, Jim.

[woodpusher]

The Civil War came, it went, and it was influential for a decade or 3 tops.

Before the Civil War we had no large standing Federal army.

Before the Civil War we had no unapportioned Federal income tax. Before the Civil War we had no Internal Revenue Bureau, later renamed to the Internal Revenue Service, to enforce the unapportioned Federal income tax.

Before the Civil War we did not have greenbacks.

Before the Civil War, the sovereign States decided who were, and were not, citizens of the State. The path to becoming naturalized into a United States citizen flowed through becoming a citizen of a State.

Post Civil War, the Federal government was able to progress into the current Federal leviathan. That's progressing America for ya.