IM-1776

The Retarded Dissident's Magazine

If American Affairs represents the intellectual standard of the dissident right, then IM-1776 is its vulgarization. Although they share the same basic perspective and even some contributors, the former’s editorial line shows some restraint in its appeal for institutional respectability and a readership across partisan lines. The upstart IM-1776, by contrast, unleashes the dissident passions sublimated by the more sober American Affairs in a grandiose presentation pitched squarely at the rabid dissident who requires ever more ostentatious rhetoric about the collapse of civilization.

Whereas American Affairs typically publishes public intellectuals with institutional credentials, IM-1776 takes its content from what it calls “the most talented writers the anonymous and dissident scene has to offer.” It therefore tends to play to the grievances of a subculture suffused with flamboyant displays of alarmism, catastrophism, and moral outrage. In short, it is cashing in, while it can, on the vibes emanating from a feverish scene of utopian dissidents high on their own supply.

IM-1776’s vulgarization of the dissident magazine’s editorial line manifests in both its About page and its mission statement, documents that amplify American Affairs’ stance on incompetent elites to new levels of delirium:

Our elites have stopped caring about what is good and what is noble and fully embraced sin and weakness clothed as virtue. Trust in our institutions has almost fully collapsed, and yet, as those in power increasingly expose themselves as frauds and charlatans, in what is probably the last desperate attempt to protect their undeserved privileges, their control over our lives has reached unprecedented levels.

The collapse of Western civilization corresponds to the spiritual fall from grace of “our elites,” who once upon a time were noble and good and cared for the people, but now have been led by dark forces into embracing sin and the pursuit of political power.

In the dissident paradox, these decadent frauds have somehow attained new levels of control out of an obviously desperate position. And somehow their attaining this unprecedented power is a sign that they are on the verge of losing it. In the Marvel politics of sinful elites versus based populists, it is indeed always darkest before dawn.

The hope on the horizon is a new band of virtuous dissidents here to “expose the limits of our mainstream conservative movements,” which have “failed to come up with any meaningful and practical alternative” to the “ideas that have brought upon our current collapse.” Where others “who claim to be the true resistance” have failed “to fully grasp the extent of wickedness and corruption among those in control,” IM-1776 recognizes the true evil of our elites and knows what needs to be done.

To create a real opposition to the regime and “to articulate a vision forward for the West,” they must assemble “under one roof” an all-star team of dissidents who have mastered “the highest quality, cutting-edge analysis that can be found online from a dissident perspective.” Only from such a laboratory of state-of-the-art dissidence can emerge “the intellectual foundations for those practical solutions capable of forming the resistance our civilization depends on.”

Like the left’s alarms about climate apocalypse or the “destruction of our democracy,” IM-1776’s dire warnings about civilizational collapse and the urgent need for a #Resistance to satanic elites satisfies the emotional demands of those radical liberals who require more and more extravagant content to keep them liking and subscribing. Whereas American Affairs, founded several years prior, frames its anti-elitism in the relatively mundane terms of a failure of leadership, a lack of good ideas, and a paucity of debate, this is not enough for the foaming-at-the-mouth dissidents catered to by IM-1776, for whom it’s not a question of producing superior policy proposals, but rather engaging in “spiritual warfare” against metaphysical evil.

Although it decries the “political decadence” that poisons our souls, IM-1776 itself represents the decadence of the dissident magazine, which must resort to ever more frantic narratives of wickedness, sin, and catastrophe to impress its frenzied audience of ideological addicts.

The present age of the dissident magazine may have begun as a practical attempt to reform a “misguided and complacent elite consensus,” but now the junkies it has created can no longer achieve climax without being stimulated by tales of dissident avengers saving civilization from Satan, one article and podcast at a time.