On September 29, 2024, President Trump posted on X the Catholic prayer of St. Michael the Archangel alongside a photo of a St. Michael painting by Italian artist Guido Reni. The next day, Russell Brand and Jordan Peterson said the Lord’s Prayer over a crowd in Washington, D.C. Although social conservatism has been a touch-and-go tactic for Republicans in elections, it’s incredibly useful to use when trying to mobilize Christian groups, but has often scared off women, moderates, and independents. This contributed to the defeat of George Bush Sr. in the 1992 election. The Center for American Women in Politics published the thoughts of many moderate Republicans at the time, saying:
[M]y own view is that women were abandoned by all three of these candidates in this election. They all targeted white men, middle-class men, the Reagan Democrats, if you will, or middle-class men on the Republican side as well.
However, over the last four years, there’s been a growing reactionary surge against American culture. Traditional and hierarchical organizations such as the Catholic and Orthodox churches have enjoyed a surge of young converts and growing media influence. Catholic Youtube channels such as Bishop Barron have grown to nearly two million subscribers, and although it is true that the rate of Gen Z Catholics stands at around 14 percent, with Orthodoxy even lower, young people have begun joining traditional sects of these churches. One article by The Standard reported about the growing interest in the Traditional Latin Mass, with one 34-year-old saying how she was attracted to the mass because of an “unfulfilling secular life.” She goes on to say:
With TLM, I think there’s a big kind of trad aesthetic. I think Gen Z are drinking less these days, sleeping around much less — they’re much more conservative than millennials. A lot of my younger friends in their 20s are married with children.
A growing influence of masculine icons like Andrew Tate and what the progressives call a “misogynistic manosphere” have also been observed. Unlike the Republicans in 1992, however, Donald Trump and his team are playing a dual game. He has already made it clear that he will veto a federal abortion ban, and his wife Melania had also defended abortion in her memoir, published soon after Trump’s statement. When comedian Tony Hichcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” during a rally in Madison Garden, Trump Allies attacked the comedian, claiming that it ruins the “open arm” message of Trump’s movement that was made during the RNC. What Trump and the regime are trying to do with all this is to create a pro-American movement that will have all the progressive qualities of the Democrats and the aggressive neo-conservatism of the Republicans.
The “trads” will help in electing Trump as president, but they will have no real power because their beliefs are threatening to the secularism of the regime. They know from the Iranian revolution what religious groups can do if they become organized.
The Revolution Awakens Shia Islam
During the street battles that emerged during the 1979 Iranian revolutions, fighters would often chant slogans reminiscent of the Marxist revolutions, whilst mixed with Islamic proclamations; some include: “God’s help and victory is near”; “death to this deceitful monarchy”; “we do not live under the burden of oppression”; “we sacrifice our lives in the path of freedom”; “worker, peasant, oppressed, sufferer”; “armed struggle is the road to freedom.” This mix of ideas is attributed to the work of Iranian revolutionary Ali Shari’ati and French Marxist Jean-Paul Sartre. Shari’ati had met Satre in Paris and, after returning to Iran, he would become known as the foundation layer of the Iranian revolution. Britannica explains:
Shariʿati’s teachings may be said to have laid the foundation for the Iranian revolution because of their great influence on the Iranian youth. His teachings attacked the tyranny of the shah and his policy of Westernization and modernization that, Shariʿati believed, damaged Iranian religion and culture and left the people without their traditional social and religious moorings. Shariʿati called for a return to true, revolutionary Shiʿism. He believed that Shiʿite Islam itself was a force for social justice and progress but also that it had been corrupted in Iran by its institutionalization by political leaders.
Shari’ati combined the Marxist ideas of armed struggle with Shia Islam which, up until then, had been considered an apolitical group. However, Ayatollah Khomeini had taken this group and organized the multiple sects of Iranian society in overthrowing the Shah, and in the Ayatollah’s first sermon, he made this declaration:
Yes, we are reactionaries, and you are enlightened intellectuals: You intellectuals do not want us to go back 1400 years. You, who want freedom, freedom for everything, the freedom of parties, you who want all the freedoms, you intellectuals: freedom that will corrupt our youth, freedom that will pave the way for the oppressor, freedom that will drag our nation to the bottom.
Iran is not the only nation in history to overthrow its regime or implement policies against liberal social life. The Nazis did the same when they took power by banning swing music and destroying the archives of Magnus Hirchfield, who had done sex change operations during the 1920s. But, unlike the regime of the Shah or the Weimar Republic, progressive liberalism is at the core of American political and social thought, and any attack against it is perceived as an attack against America itself. This is why the modern American movement of the “trad” or the “red-pilled man” has been contained by the regime and will continue to be.
Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More
In an article written by David Goron on the ethics of Ludwig von Mises, Mises is quoted as saying:
We call contentment or satisfaction that state of a human being which does not and cannot result in any action. Acting man is eager to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory. His mind imagines conditions which suit him better, and his action aims at bringing about this desired state. The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness.
The United States has identified itself with the idea of pleasure, but as we have seen among the younger generations of America, many are now leaving and outright attacking this notion. Currently, the CDC estimates that 1 in 5 Americans has an STD, nearly sixty-eight million people; the American Psychological Association estimates that 40-50 percent of marriages end in divorce. All of these problems create real societal and psychological harm that will create an uneasiness to compel a man to act.
At the moment, these reactionary forces have been contained and put under the fold of the American flag for the 2024 election, but if things do not change both economically and sociologically, these once-passive groups could find themselves enacting the same violence as seen in Iran. Libertarians, conservatives, and even progressives must understand that many of the problems mentioned above are real and devastating; to simply dismiss these people as radicals or fundamentalists will merely temporarily hide the reality.
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