In 2015-2016 I saw a lot of connections between new right-wing movements and the struggles of Traditional Catholics. I truly felt that religio-political connections could be made between this New Right and the “Rad Trads” as they were called. “Rad Trad”, of course, is a pejorative term. It means one who is a radical traditionalist Catholic, and it was an aspersion cast upon the Catholic faithful by the likes of Novus Ordo “FrancisChurch” types who’ve long desired to replace the Catholicism of the ages with modernist, emasculating pablum. For years, I straddled between the circles of the Dissident Right and that of the Rad Trads. I tried to write about their similarities and demonstrate common causes.
Finally in January of 2018, I ended up writing Alt-Right, Meet Rad-Trad for Men of the West. In this article, I said of the two groups:
Whether these groups can hold out during the storm remains to be seen. It may be that neither group will resemble itself before the storm of history has passed. For now, however, it can be said that these groups overlap, and in a certain sense, are traveling on a parallel path. Will one group find the other? That remains to be seen.
Well, things had changed. For one, the government sabotage at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally happened, and this event turned the “Alt-Right” label utterly toxic. I had planned on writing a second article—a book, actually—aimed towards the Catholics. It was to be called Rad-Trad, Meet Alt-Right. This book was partially written. (You can read an excerpt HERE and HERE.) But after the poisoning of the “Alt-Right” label, I dropped the project. Instead, my message to Traditional Catholics about the Alt-Right came in the form of an article I did for Culture Wars titled: A Post-Mortem of the Alt-Right Brand. (Later on, Luke Ford and Kevin Michael Grace would review this article on the Luke Ford Podcast.) Donald Trump was going strong amid much resistance, but his MAGA followers on social media were targeted, deplatformed, attacked, and many other horrible things. Whatever the Alt-Right was supposed to be in the beginning, it was clearly in shambles by early 2018.
I was prescient in my discussions about the eventual social media censorship. The unification of the Dissident Right and the Rad-Trads would never materialize. Or so I thought.
Enter the Groypers
Groypers. I don’t follow them. I don’t listen to Nick Fuentes much—though I did enjoy very much how he confronted the hypocrisy of Charlie Kirk’s 2019 Turning Point USA propaganda. That, in fact, was the moment that Fuentes entered my radar. And he seems like an energetic, fun, happy kind of commentator. Perhaps I never noticed him before because he was so young, but I notice him now, and I’ve even started meeting some of his followers.
These Groypers are the Rad-Trads meeting the Dissident Right that I wanted to see a few years ago. Heck, much to my delight, they’ve even latched on to the wisdom of E. Michael Jones—someone I’d been following since 2000, when he published his amazing book, Monsters from the ID. I mean, sure I’d been promoting Jones’ work on my blogs for years—but I had no idea that the Groypers’ interest would overlap so much with mine.
And really, it is clear to me that the Groypers are a force to be reckoned with. They’ve already re-directed some of the national conversation in one way or another. They’re fierce. They’re America-firsters. They’re Christianity-firsters. And they’re rooted in the idea of a Christendom. It’s refreshing to see a Christian body that is unafraid to reach for power. This is what should have been done for a long time. The other religions do this, after all.
Other indications that the Groypers are a notable group is when I hear them being discussed in other circles. Not just other Catholics, but also their critics. For example, a few months ago I heard Richard Spencer remark about how those tradcaths are not the future of this country and that they’re deluded. And just last week, over at the Gotto-Gotfried channel, they were speaking with Jim Goad about these “traditionalist-mostly-Catholics”. Paul Gottfried even admitted that some of the Groypers contribute to Chronicles Magazine, stating that they are incoherent, but are good at driving “scripted-conservative types” such as Ben Shapiro crazy for their cuckservatism. Gottfried and Goad, of course, believe the Groypers to be mistaken, Jones is a nutcase, and their movement will go nowhere. And just this week, JF Gariépy said he wanted to work with Antifa to completely deplatform Nick Fuentes. And—UPDATE—wouldn’t you know it? Garipey and his allies got their wish, as Fuentes was permanently banned from YouTube just this past Friday. He currently is streaming from DLive, and has announced plans to stream from his own website later on. He shows no signs he’ll stop what he’s been doing, even admitting that he expected an uphill battle from the very beginning. His base is formidable, and there’s a lot of signs that Fuentes will endure. But whatever happens, the point is that the Groypers are there on the scene, and you cant put toothpaste back in a bottle.
Rad-Trads and Beyond
So there you have it. The Venn diagram has materialized. Rad-Trad has met Alt-Right, only the terminology is different now. And so, I have to wonder what will happen in the future? What will happen to these witty banner carriers for Christendom when Trump is gone, and the public mind no longer tolerates taboo-defying, fun subversives?
A part of me thinks that this Groyper movement will change course into a pro-monarchy direction. I have always argued that monarchy is inevitable for the West, and that this era of republics is a temporary phenomenon. Both the Left and the Right are losing patience with this lukewarm Enlightenment nightmare we’ve been living through for the past five hundred years. So I believe that just as we see the Left agitating for socialism and communism, we will eventually see the Right steer in the other direction—the true and ultimate right wing, which is monarchism.
It has been easy for me to let this belief fade now and then, but then I see articles like the one I read last week by Brett Stevens titled: Monarchy Enters the Alt-Right in Force.
For those of us who have been around these issues for some time, the task seemed evident: at some point Western Civilization took a wrong turn, whether the peasant revolts, Magna Carta, or Enlightenment,™ and we need to retrace our steps to right before that event and start over.
Over the past few years, more on the Alt Right have been coming around to the view that modern society is altogether evil and that it is killing white people through existential misery, recognizing instead that we need aristocracy, a feudal system, a caste hierarchy, nationalism leading to culture rule, a competitive but not mercenary economy, and some type of strong transcendent goal and religious faith to guide us.
When one takes the step beyond democracy and dictatorship to embrace the idea of the return of kings, the ensuing wholesale rejection of modernity finally addresses all of the concerns we have with our world as it is now, and rips out the causes of those current problems and their origins.
The idea of a monarchy is being brought up more and more in the comment boxes. It’s not just Charles Coulombe and his counter-revolutionaries who are touting this notion. The Neoreactionaries never left, and you can see them here and there. Monarchy is a growing thought among many, and I expect that once Donald Trump is out of office, the Right will pine very much for a better, more traditional form of government. Is this the future of the Groyper movement in particular? That will remain to be seen.
Groypers are at the stage of setting flaming bags of crap on the doorsteps of Shapiru and Kirk. Its not without value (comedic and otherwise), but they’ll need to move beyond that to have a lasting, positive impact. Nor is a Roman Catholic Monarchy the only western form of monarchy.
Your brand of Trad-Cat is entirely Shapiro-like in that, as per your own fawning blog post, you want very much to keep kissing Bergoglio’s ring.
And Bergoglio is no more Catholic than your average demon-worshipping satanist, as anyone of normal intelligence can see by now.
You can’t build castles on foundations of sand, which is all you are trying to do until you face the reality that the Novus Orco is not Catholic at all and there hasn’t been a legitimate Pope since 1958.
[…] Instead, what I can offer you is an article I wrote for Men of the West last week. Nick Fuentes, leader of the Groypers—a group of “TradCaths” who are despised by many on the right—was deplatformed from YouTube on Valentine’s Day. While Fuentes has done much to earn scorn from various quarters, the phenomenon he finds himself in the center of has wider implications, as I discuss in my article: Tradcaths, Groypers, and Beyond. […]
Logic and reasoning set me on the path to monarchism many years ago, when the very thought was an anathema. It still is, but seeing it catch on, even in the small outliers, is giving me hope and confirming that I am indeed not entirely insane. Before I left social media, I was able to have relatively calm and rational conversations with people about it. It was the same logic and reasoning that had brought me to Catholicism. Yes, I am a purist. I look for the original source. I look for what always was and what WORKED. Logic. But it has never failed me. Modern man thinks he’s so brilliant. So woke. The adults of the world should have smacked down their petulant babies when they had the chance. Now they are the adults, but they have never grown up. We are being ruled by 70 year old infants.
My complaint. Article is I this and I that. I,I,I,I,I. No attribution. Am I just supposed to know? Is that you LH? Anyway. Men of the West. Ooohhh! That’s nice. I too am of the west, the midwest, Kansas. Where the west is still the best, you bigot. Thank you. This is all very silly. Tend thine own faults. Pray if you can.
“Is that you, LH?” Yes. Attribution is at the bottom of the article.
“Where the west is still the best, you bigot.” ?!? What’s your point? Bigot? I’m a rather open-minded guy. What is your point, here?
“Tend thine own faults.” What are you referring to?
Okay. Gotcha. Now who becomes king in the new monarchy? How does one go about finding such a fellow? I mean (seriously) which bloodline isn’t stained and poisoned?
If you have a Hapsburgian in mind, forget it! Which field would your king candidate and mine duke it out?
I’ve been asked the same question and didn’t have an answer at the time but I am now beginning to believe that it must be a process rather than an overnight change. There were centuries between magna Carta and Victoria producing the last veto of legislation from parliament.
It took hundreds of years to get where we are and it will take a while to find our way back.
I think a beginning is to return to the Constitution standards of a REAL electoral college, no direct election if senators, and voting rights only extended to those who own property – if not real estate then a comparable holding of stock or public bonds.
After a few generations of this maybe we would have the beginnings of a proper aristocracy established. And maybe a few more generations and we could have a nobility class from which a true and proper monarchy could arise.
After all, isn’t that the way we did it the first time?
The old aristocracy of Europe originally arose through men proving their superior natural qualities through military leadership. Thus, a natural aristocracy of the purest bloodlines of nordic racial stock organically grew into being a legal aristocracy. I know that few Americans are willing to discuss the subject of race, but it simply cannot be denied that it exercises a strong influence throughout the history of men.
In my judgement it would not be wise, in the scenario where your country would want to legally embrace monarchy, to simply select a man from the presently recognised European nobility and crown him king. The “celebrity nobles” manifest a widespread moral degeneracy, and I do not wish to see such a person inflicted upon your country as a hereditary monarch. I, myself, have a king, and he is powerless and a servant of the sabbatean frankists.
The return of kings, I believe, will come to pass in the way in which the old order of Europe originally emerged; through men proving their skills of military leadership when all things will have fallen into chaos and ruin. We, Franks, have prophecies for Europe regarding a man of the ancient blood of Faramund who will with divine help overthrow the enemies of God and restore the old order of Catholic Christendom, and he remains unknown to the world until he must fulfill his divine calling, which confirms what I am saying; that the return of sacral monarchy will happen through victorious warfare.
Fantastic. I only recently learned of Faramond. I’m with you franks when it comes to awaiting this long-prophesied king.
We are such products of our environment. Was the photo deliberately chosen to make a contrast between the magnificent church and the people in it? Or was the person who chose the photo blind to the dress of the people?
Arthur that’s a great observation. The photo shows a people who have completely forgotten who they are and where they came from. And particularly where they are and what they’re actually doing. And they’re so numbed they don’t even realize the complete incongruity of standing in a beautiful church during Mass while wearing shorts and a t-shirt. It’s like going to a job interview wearing swim trunks and being so oblivious that it doesn’t even occur to you that you are being absurd.
If I am pledging fealty to my King, Duke or Barron, then so be it. What made those kingdoms work was not just the tribalism from which they evolved, but also from the bonds of love, honor, mutual dependence & yes strength. A king was the man with whom one shared culture, religion, history and allegiance. It was a bond that was psychological, physical & spiritual. So, who do we swear our honor, loyalty & sword to? I do not know. But I can tell you he will be a man that shares my culture, religion, history & will to fight for our community.