Here Was Tolkien, When Shall We Expect Another?

The Right Wing has an art problem. It’s a somewhat tired topic, but I don’t think that anyone in our sphere really disputes this on a factual level. They will point to various causes such as lack of funding, no institutional support, etc. However, that doesn’t change the reality on the ground. Right now, we have a wide scattering of indie content creators going their own way. Some projects are more successful than others, but it’s still nothing compared to the leviathan that is Leftwing Hollywood. 

But before I go any further, there is a far more important issue at hand. I want to address those who consider themselves serious Right-Wingers. This goes out to anyone and everyone who wants to take a stand against the Left. I say this because it’s important to understand what mechanism brought us here. 

Often we think that we are embroiled in a culture war. You have to understand that that is the farthest thing from the truth. We lost the culture war decades ago. And it wasn’t with the election of any President or Congressman. It wasn’t with any specific policy decision or law passed. It wasn’t even in the atheist/christian debates in the 2010s. The culture war was fought and lost over your television screen. The battleground was in your books, your video games, and even your radio. And it was all lost before most realized the battle had even taken place. 

What do I mean by this? Well, I think it’s fairly straightforward. The media which we consume shapes our values. I can recall some smirking at this argument in the early 2000s. The name Jack Thompson comes to mind with video games. And sure, it’s preposterous to believe that GTA will automatically make you go shoot up your school (though in today’s climate, I could forgive many for thinking so). But I wonder, how many young kids began cussing more from the game? Just how many were desensitized to vulgar issues such as drug addiction? And I wonder how many had their first sexual experience with some of the more lewd scenes in the game? I assure you, that number is not zero, and that fact alone is horrifying. 

Well, it was horrifying at some point. Now, we just snicker when we hear of kids being exposed to pornographic material. It’s a rite of passage for our decedent society, but I don’t want to lose the point here. Few people are drastically changed by any single piece of work. However, what happens we you grow up in a media environment that is filled with vulgar material? What happens when every piece of entertainment you consume is inundated with the values of the Left? 

Well, what happens is that a large portion of the country cannot conceive of a world without fornication, sodomy, and transitioning children. Many on the Right Wing fail to understand just how big this problem is. We often accuse the Left of voter fraud, but that avoids the terrifying reality that many of our countrymen ardently support these issues and believe in them wholeheartedly. 

But I digress, the war for America was fought over media. The average person didn’t abandon Christianity because they read the Bible and found contradictions in it. They abandoned traditional values because those were lambasted in all their entertainment. I can’t count how many TV shows out there depict the churches as money-grabbing, pedophilic, or just downright delusional. Not to mention, every series involving high school had to have at least one teenage couple engaging in premarital sex. 

This is how we lost America. So, whenever someone on the Right Wing criticizes fiction as being unimportant, tell them exactly why the “Red Wave” for the GOP turned out to be a trickle. If America is to be retaken, that solution must include the production of art. Specifically, the art that speaks the values of the Right Wing: the good, the true, and the beautiful.

And now we come to the main point of the article. Here was Tolkien, when shall we expect another? We have the old classics, of course, but we can’t seem to produce anything now. A lot of people will lay the blame on funding. There is a great deal of truth to this. Money will determine the size and scope of what we can do, but I find the answer to be unsatisfactory—especially in the domain of writing. 

Words on a page don’t cost much money. While book covers are expensive, I suspect they wouldn’t be a deal breaker. Publishing is certainly difficult, but if a text is a good enough, then I think it ought to do at least fairly well on the internet. So, why is the Right Wing not producing classic works of literature?

There are those who would comment that such works are being made. A lot of indie creators who are doing good work are not given the spotlight. Meanwhile, the leadership of the Right seems to be mostly grifters who just complain about the latest woke product. Those that do produce anything only seem to care about their own work. Neither groups are interested in shout-outs to smaller creators. It seems fairly obvious that the problem is one of marketing. 

But that still doesn’t seem a completely satisfactory answer either. Surely word of mouth would eventually have its due? If someone truly has a masterpiece on their hands, then you would think people might take notice. Fellow authors will probably laugh at that naïve statement. We all know just how difficult it is to get one interested reader. But I think the point still has some merit. 

Is it really so difficult to form artistic communities to spread work around? We have the tools. I could easily imagine a discord server where contests are held for fiction pieces. Perhaps prize money can be involved. There are a few doing something similar to this, Passage Prize, Cirsova, etc. But those few exceptions are far from a burgeoning artistic movement. 

And I think there’s the real question. If the problem is indeed one of marketing, then the first step is establishing a brand—a name that sets us apart from the rest of the market. After all, brands are what sell. They make the product recognizable to the consumer as something they want. Without a brand describing what the product is, it’s nearly impossible to make a sale. And yet there is no name—brand—for the art movement currently happening in the Right Wing. There is nothing we can say which defines our literature/art as depicting Rightwing values. 

We don’t have a name that defines us, not like previous artistic movements. There were the Romantics of the 1800s, the Modernists and later Postmodernists of the 1900s, but there’s no name for what we’re doing. There’s no brand that puts forward what we’re really about. 

But I know why there’s no name. You may have already guessed it, but this problem goes further than art. In fact, it strikes right at the core of what the Right Wing movement is. So, let me ask you, what does the Right Wing stand for? 

I mean, we’re all against the Left, but what’s our positive vision? Putting aside politics, what is our shared definition of the good, the true, and the beautiful? What is the vision that unites us all? Well, if you’ve spent anytime in the online space, you would know there isn’t any. 

We have Catholics, Sedevacantists, Eastern Orthodox, Protestants, Mormons, Muslims, Neo-Pagans, Platonists, possibly Buddhists and Hindus but I’ve never met any, Atheists, Nietzscheans (I could go on, but I think the point is made). The truth is that there is no unified Right Wing. We may stand against the Left, but that’s about it. And while there are organizational structures in many of these groups, they are far from a unifying force. The GOP, in whatever capacity they have as a representative of the Right Wing, can basically only agree on vague economic ideals. 

While this means we are politically fractured, this also means that we’re fractured artistically. There is so little cooperation and dialogue in our art communities because we cannot assume a shared aesthetic and meaning. We don’t have a name because we’re all just individuals pursuing our own interests and beliefs. There can be no name for the current Right Wing artistic movement because it’s not there. It doesn’t exist. Everyone is just doing their own thing. 

This has consequences for marketing, but I also think it impedes the creation of truly great literature. Tolkien was not an artist created in a vacuum. He was deeply inspired by the Norse and Old English mythos. He was steeped in devout Catholicism. And perhaps most importantly, he had a network of peers who shared his values and helped refine his vision. We didn’t get Lord of the Rings from Tolkien; we got it from his surrounding environment as well. We cannot get a Tolkien because the conditions are simply not there for it to happen. This is the current problem facing Right Wing art. This is why we cannot produce “great art”. 

I recently watched a podcast where one of the hosts said that we’re currently going through “a Renaissance” of Right Wing art with all the individual creators starting to make their own projects. I think that description is wrong. 

The Renaissance was a highly organized and institutionalized period. It was a refinement of specific cultural ideas and religious beliefs into artistic form. Needless to say, that is not what’s happening now. I think we’re still a long way off from Leonardo DaVinci or Michelangelo. We’ve barely emerged as a separate entity from the Left—let alone establishing any real organized pushback. I think there needs to be a leveling of expectations of what we can do for the immediate term, political or artistic. 

So far, this article has admittedly been blackpilling. However, I don’t want to leave you with the wrong impression. We likely won’t see the next Tolkien for quite some time, but that’s not what’s important right now. The question you’re probably left with is this: are all these indie creators just wasting their time? After all, they’re almost certainly not going to see any real fame or success—the literary merit of their work notwithstanding. Should these artists and creators just give up and focus their time on something else? I would answer, absolutely not. 

The phase we’re in right now is an inculcation. All these Right Wing factions are currently left in the ruins of the old regime. We’re witnessing the first baby steps of the ideas which will eventually shape the next age. I think that this is the most important time period for any artist to live in. While we might not see the fame of Tolkien, we do get to lay the foundation for what comes next. 

It’s admittedly not going to be the glorious task of painting the Sistine Chapel. We’re going to be the ones who are wading through the muck, scavenging the meaning and beauty out of the ruins of the West. We will do this until we find something that strikes true and is powerful enough to unite us under a shared vision of what the future can be. 

We’re going to have to be the artists when it’s the least glamorous to do so. No one is going to ask us to do what we do. Frankly, not enough of them care. None of us are going to see the earth shattering fame and success that came to prior generations. The culture for that just isn’t there anymore. We’re going to have to do the hard work that no one else wants to do. 

But we’re also going to be the artists that counted the most in the end. It will be us that sets the tone going into the 21st century. It’s going to be upon our shoulders that future generations will stand on. If we abandon this duty, then we are cursing our descendants with the same cultural rot that befell us. We may not be Tolkien or Lewis or any of the rest, but we will be the ones to inspire them.