New Years Reminder: Irony is Okay

Serious post

At least once per year I hear about some nascent post-irony movement in either mainstream cultural commentary or alternative media. In the former case, the story often feels like a forced meme designed to deprive the dissident or alternative right of whatever lingering comedic energy it has while in the latter case it feels more like an honest critique from upstart dissident commentators trying to muscle into a crowded and stale media market. Regardless, both camps can be modeled as attempts to foment something unoriginal in western history: a movement based on youth who have very serious beliefs and want to be taken seriously by an older audience whom the youth simultaneously disdain. Such movements are easily manipulated by cynical old people and consequently should be tempered by healthy doses of irony.

As of the Azov Battalion or Al-Nusra, some might say of dissident right irony that it has a checkered history. BAP, for example, is a poster known for making humorous ironic allusions; yet he often insists that he doesn’t “do” irony (I disagree, although maybe he is more serious today). For my part, National Socialists, Orthodox Jews, and Traditionalist Catholics have long called me out for hiding behind feminine irony or being “irony poisoned.” And now, after ending its long and troubled relationship with irony, the Marxist left is finally following suit and getting serious.

Many of these critics are simply disgruntled because they aren’t part of an in-group that understands the ironic allusions made by individuals the critics view as media market competitors. Other more principled critics regard it as ignoble and feminine in general to not stand on business and keep it real like the Black woman who, after not receiving a sufficient amount of french fries with her order, assaults a fast food employee and vandalizes the restaurant.

There is some merit to both criticisms. Irony can become so group specific and self-involved that even insiders end up feeling alienated, and so abstract and convoluted that even the purveyors of irony themselves aren’t sure what they mean in the moment. Irony and passive aggression are also by definition feminine traits, being as they are, in many cases, refined extensions of verbal communication. There nevertheless is undeniable rhetorical merit to ironic communication.

For starters, irony is integral to western philosophy: a profession which, like the advisory work of a priest or rabbi, is one of man’s most feminine. As Socrates said, irony can be a midwife to the truth. More importantly for us, irony can encrypt or retroactively alter information, thereby potentially performing practical, self-protective functions by concealing the real meaning of provocative statements or providing a speaker with a means to offer an anodyne reinterpretation of a controversial statement.

The push to get younger generations off pseudonymous and anonymous social media and onto self-dox media like Instagram, Tiktok, podcasts, or streaming platforms may be cynical ploys by companies either to gather AI training data or assuage the foreign subversion paranoia of America’s “intelligence community.” In either case, the push is bad for ordinary American youth who possess the spark that drives one to explore and share radical ideas and engage in related forms of vulnerable self-expression.

Setting aside the practicality of expectations of anonymity today given the now readily-accessible nature of previously boutique technologies like stylometry or biometrics, anonymity remains an ideal form of meaning encryption. Even in anonymity’s absence, some of its dissembling functions can be preserved through irony. This is one reason why I use irony in every part of my life, from my commute to and from work to how I eat my lunch. Even my connection to the internet, being mediated by seven proxies, is ironic.

Irony is another level of encryption that gives a young person exploring the world plausible deniability about controversial claims and provides them with multiple paths to preserve their dignity should they later regret certain statements, in which they otherwise still find some meritorious content. For instance, a young person who unashamedly calls for Total CEO Death today may in the future explain that the apparently radical statement was intended as a verbal performance to counterbalance and start a conversation about the uncritical pro-CEO absolutism characteristic of contemporary business culture and law. (Note the similarity to how a radical ideology or religion softens its most extreme claims and demands in exchange for admission into civil society).

Another way to look at the value of irony in this context is to understand it as an essentially American prophylactic against old world methods of social control. Although there no longer are social costs for criminal outbursts such as the one I described with my Black woman simile, there are social costs for sensitive young men asserting controversial beliefs in the presence of the media or other establishment authorities.

Many Americans are the descendants of socially, ethnically, and racially mixed refuse from the old world whose ancestors were given a chance to achieve a higher form of life by the remarkable and possibly unique American experiment with liberal democracy. As Talcott Parsons explained, America allows individuals to be relatively free from roles and other ties that in the old world would have been ascribed to them at birth.

The American state is agnostic in that it does not require you to believe anything. It does, however, require you to act as if you believe in tolerance and charity, if only to the minimum extent necessary to preserve the peaceful status-quo among diverse peoples. Although these criteria appear non-invasive, they can be and have been weaponized in a way which is analogous to what people mean when they speak of “lawfare” in the context of state power.

America’s culture of media (and other public institution) shaming and ostracism has introduced a kind of ascriptive tie for citizens who make the mistakes of exploring intolerant ideas or expressing related but comparatively moderate dissenting opinions. The most obvious recent example has been corporate and government enforcement of social taboos invented by group-narcissistic academics on the left. In the future, the reverse is likely to happen, with social taboos being enforced by group-narcissistic academics on the right. Telling young Americans in this social environment that they should give the public their social and biometric privacy, and their unqualified true beliefs, is a demand for young Americans to self-subjugate and prostrate themselves before old world-style identitarians who use American corporations and government to enforce ascriptive roles.

I choose irony over making myself an object for the state, corporations, and my own enemies. I personally think it unwise for youth to define their movements entirely as post-ironic. You can of course choose to keep it real and burn down local hardware stores on the left, or, on the right, perform sincere antisemitic minstrel shows to confirm the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblat in his ethnonarcissistic delusions.

The criticism that irony is ignoble and unmanly remains valid and should be considered, but only as a moderating supplement to a strategy which preserves irony as a legitimate, serious form of rhetoric. Also, the criticsm is not one that should solely be leveled against anons and dissidents. Just look at Matt Yglesias, a man with zero principles who makes a handsome living from a uniquely grating form of unprincipled punditry.

Additional resources on alt-right irony can be found here and here.

I hope my Julian Calendar readers had a merry Christmas or happy Hannukah, and I wish my Gregorian Calendar readers a merry Christmas etc. Please watch for my upcoming review of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s latest book, The Message.