The Return of the King
The Second Religiousness of the West
My last essay argued that the discourse of liberal rationalism is not a neutral framework for understanding the world, but a weapon of managerial power. In practice, it dissolves group attachments and renders subject peoples interchangeable, fungible, and ultimately, replaceable. This process can be understood as liberalism’s war on attachment. In response, I argued that Western civilization needs a war for attachment: a deliberate reforging of the social bonds that liberalism has spent centuries suppressing.
This is not primarily a political process, but a linguistic and cultural one. It requires abandoning the procedural, impersonal discourse of liberal rationalism in favour of something entirely different - the language of affect. The key is not to contest liberal premises within the logic of rationalism, but to shatter that logic itself, exposing it as not merely mistaken but suicidal.
Liberalism thrives on deception. It masquerades as a system of neutral persuasion, ensnaring its adversaries in ostensibly rational debate, while its real work - speech restrictions, social atomization, and the destruction of inherited bonds - proceeds unchallenged.
Once we recognize that liberalism is not a neutral ideology but a weapon of managerial power, the discursive dynamic shifts from persuasion to the real engine of world history: force. This ultimately means political force; but first, it means social and cultural force. Language ceases to be a tool for proving things and becomes a weapon for galvanizing loyalty, identity, and belonging.
And this brings us from diagnosis to prescription. What does it mean to fight a ‘war for attachment’?
If liberalism’s suppression of attachment-based language is truly a civilizational extinction mechanism, how do we reverse it? How do we actively reforge deep loyalties – not just in theory, but in practice? What kind of rhetoric, social pressure, and elite formation is required to break managerial power and reignite group survival instincts?
We don’t need another lament. We need a playbook.
The answer is already before us. The recognition that affective language must be reclaimed - and rationalism deliberately sidelined - is not just an insight. It’s a method. This essay will make it explicit: how to break the power of the managerial regime in real time.
Let’s begin.
In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Émile Durkheim - one of the founders of sociology - observed that language, ritual, and shared symbols are not merely tools of communication. They are mechanisms that generate collective consciousness. Language provides the psychic glue that binds individuals into a coherent group, and when infused with sacred or mythic meaning, it becomes a powerful engine of social solidarity.
Rationalist-liberal discourse, by contrast, is fundamentally anti-cohesive. By insisting on neutral, propositional language stripped of emotional resonance, it atomizes individuals and dissolves social bonds. Mythic and religious language does the opposite: it activates what Durkheim called collective effervescence - a state of heightened social energy in which individuals experience the world as part of something greater than themselves.
The liberal managerial class fears this kind of language precisely because it forges cohesive communities that can be a rival source of power. This is why they are obsessed with suppressing identity-affirming speech under the pretext of harm reduction or inclusivity. Their true goal is not to prevent harm. It is to ensure that no strong, affective community emerges as a challenge to their rule.
To understand why some groups acquire and maintain power while others decay, we can return to Vilfredo Pareto.1 He identified two primary psychological types among elites:
The Foxes (or Class I residues): These are the planners, bureaucrats, and ideologues who flourish in stable times but collapse during crisis. They live by their wits, relying on manipulation, deceit, and cunning rather than force. Rationalist and innovative, they prioritize novelty and abstraction over loyalty, duty, or tradition. Their attachments to family, nation, and religion are weak, though they are adept at exploiting these bonds in others. In economic affairs, they favour speculation and risk-taking. They live for the present, with little concern for posterity.
The Lions (or Class II residues): These are the men of instinct, action, and myth. They do not build power through rational argument but through raw force, shared purpose, and visceral mobilization. They forge strong affective bonds and uphold inherited traditions. Where Foxes scheme, Lions fight. Where Foxes calculate, Lions believe. They are cautious in economic affairs, distrust novelty, and are bound to family, Church, and nation. They prioritize character, duty, and sacrifice over cleverness and innovation.
Pareto showed that decadent elites always overproduce Foxes. As their numbers swell, the ruling class becomes detached, cynical, and indifferent to the fate of the polity. Rationalist abstraction replaces instinct, and manipulation replaces leadership. This process is not merely a sign of decline, but its cause.
In time, a polity governed by Foxes inevitably weakens. This opens the door for its replacement by a group richer in Class II residues, whether from within or without.
Today’s managerial elite provides a textbook example of this decadence. It is a class of Foxes - rationalist, manipulative, and incapable of real leadership. But nature abhors a vacuum, and power does not disappear; it shifts. The question is whether a new Western elite will emerge to harness the growing disillusionment, or whether history will find another way to resolve the imbalance.
The mythic, religious language discussed by Durkheim is inherently Class II in nature. It summons instinct, loyalty, and solidarity, making it the natural medium for mobilizing latent Class II residues within Western populations. This is not just a theoretical preference, but an operational necessity. A new elite cannot emerge through rationalist discourse. It requires the emotional and symbolic fuel of mythic language to sustain itself, forge cohesion, and replace the exhausted managerial class. This means the return of myth is not merely desirable: it is the precondition for elite transition.
Already, across the West, the residues of group-resistance are stirring. Despite media and legal suppression, mass support for populist and nationalist movements continues to grow. These movements remain incoherent, lacking the strategic clarity necessary to displace the managerial class. But the underlying force is unmistakable. We are approaching the moment when the whisper becomes a roar - the point at which liberal ideology no longer commands authority, and when raw group-persistence erupts with volcanic force.
The sterility of rationalist discourse is not a new revelation. Nietzsche foresaw it over a century ago, warning that the modern obsession with abstract logic, neutrality, and universalism would ultimately prove barren. Rationalism, he argued, is not the culmination of human development. Instead, it is a sickness - a deviation from life that dissolves natural bonds of instinct, hierarchy, and attachment. Today, we see its full effects: hollow, atomized, infertile peoples and societies that are incapable of reproducing themselves or justifying their existence.
Spengler expanded on Nietzsche’s insight in The Decline of the West, observing that in the final phase of civilization, ruling elites become trapped in cold, technical rationality. They strip language of its affective force, dismiss myth and instinct as ‘irrational,’ and impose a bureaucratic, managerial worldview that denies the value of life itself.
But Spengler also recognized that this sterility cannot last. The decline of rationalist discourse is not just a passive event; it is a creative opportunity.
As managerial elites lose their ability to manufacture legitimacy, their language ceases to command obedience. What follows is not an intellectual correction, but an existential rupture. Spengler called this the Second Religiousness: a resurgence of sacred and mythic consciousness that rekindles group cohesion and lays the foundation for new elite formation.
This is not just a prediction. It’s a strategy.
The pathway to replacing the liberal managerial class is not merely, or even primarily, political. It is linguistic, cultural, and spiritual.
To build a new elite, we must actively reclaim affective language and intentionally marginalize rationalist discourse. This means (re)constructing an independent moral and symbolic universe: one that restores bonds of love, loyalty, duty, and hierarchy through myth, symbol, and collective memory.
The sterility of managerial rationalism will not be argued out of existence. It will be shattered by the return of instinct and belief. This is the Second Religiousness.
And this is the fundamental reason why every attempt to reverse Western decline has failed: they have fixated on politics while ignoring the pre-political foundations of power. A handful of commentators have begun to grasp this, but neither the full implications nor a viable strategy for application have been seriously pursued.
The idea that the same electoral strategies that have been repeatedly foiled, subverted, or co-opted will somehow succeed this time is not just naive. It is arrogant folly. The managerial state does not just rule through votes, laws, or parties: it rules by controlling the language and myths through which people interpret reality. This is liberal-rationalist discourse. Unless this control is broken, every political effort will be neutralized before it begins.2
Trump’s ongoing efforts to dismantle the managerial regime are both stunning and unprecedented. His second term has exposed the weakness of the managerial class and demonstrated that its grip on power is more fragile than it appears. Yet this insurgency, for all its disruptive force, remains the work of a single man. Without a deeper mythic foundation to sustain it, such efforts are ultimately unsustainable. A civilization cannot be renewed by charisma alone. It requires a symbolic language that binds its people together, giving them a shared understanding of their destiny. Without this, even the most remarkable political upheaval risks being a passing moment, rather than the beginning of true restoration.
The path to Western renewal requires something far more subversive and potent than conventional political agitation. A true counter-elite must strike at the deeper, pre-rational level - at the root of cohesion, attachment, and social power. This begins with the reclamation of affective language. For only those who can say without apology that I love my people, and say without shame that I hate what threatens my people, will have the will to endure.
But here we encounter an immediate and seemingly insurmountable obstacle. The managerial class has spent decades constructing a discursive and legal regime designed to make this kind of language impossible. Today, one misstep in public speech - or even private speech - can destroy your career, reputation, and future. This makes the formation of a rival elite all but impossible.
This essay explores how certain public figures have punctured the discourse of liberal rationalism and defied its constraints. For Donald Trump and Elon Musk, this has not been a cost-free exercise. Yet they have not only survived; they have thrived.
But they are exceptions. They possess wealth, status, and charisma, which helps them bear the costs of defiance. What about everyone else? How can those without fortune or celebrity speak freely, authentically, and powerfully? What is the language of the dispossessed?
Look at it another way.
What form of mythic language is already embedded in the Western mind?
What tradition possesses the power to summon the deep, instinctual residues of group-persistence needed to forge cohesion and sustain a new elite?
What offers a vast and enduring body of metaphor, parable, allegory, and aphorism?
And - crucially - what mode of speech remains, at least in part, legally protected?
There is only one choice.
The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner. (Psalm 118:22)
Christianity: not merely as a belief system, but as a mode of speech – one that bypasses elite gatekeeping entirely.
This is why.
Christian language is already embedded in Western consciousness. It requires no innovation, only revitalization.
It possesses deep, mythic resonance capable of producing powerful group cohesion.
It remains legally protected in most Western countries, making suppression more difficult.
It naturally invokes Class II residues, creating the conditions for elite replacement.
It disrupts rationalist-liberal discourse by forcing a return to pre-rational forms of speech and social organization.
This is why the managerial class has always sought to neutralize or co-opt Christian language. They understand, intuitively, that affective language is a precondition for power.
The mythic and traditional language of Christianity is an untapped weapon against the managerial order. Wielding it requires no celebrity, charisma, or wealth. It already carries deep cultural legitimacy. It cannot be blithely dismissed.
But Christian language is not just defensible - it is disruptive. Because it is layered with metaphor, parable, and affective meaning, it resists the narrow strictures of rationalist speech. Attempts to suppress it immediately invoke religious freedom protections, making it a natural shield against speech restrictions.
And Christian language does more than protect - it binds. Unlike the cold, procedural dialect of liberalism, it is inherently communal. It forms attachments. And no new elite can arise without a shared symbolic language.
This makes Christianity more than a faith. It is a social technology. It offers the means to outflank the managerial class and its progressive speech-regime. It is a popular vehicle for disruptive discourse and a rallying point for cohesion.
And it is not merely an instrument of defiance, but of formation: the foundation upon which a new elite can be built.
The power of language is not merely in its content, but in its capacity to generate a shared moral universe. This is where Durkheim’s insights becomes crucial. Religion is not primarily about belief, as rationalists contend, but about the symbolic order that fuses individuals into a cohesive whole.
This should help us understand Christian language not as a mere collection of propositional truths, but as a symbolic matrix - a structure that binds individuals into a common social order. Moreover, traditional Christian discourse possesses exactly what is needed to generate collective effervescence: the intense group solidarity that arises from shared experience. Its language, symbols, and rituals do not merely express belief; they forge thick social bonds.
This is why the managerial elite fears affective, mythic, and religious language, and why they work so hard to reduce it to neutral, universalist abstractions - because they understand that controlling language means controlling group cohesion. And it is why they brand strong, identity-affirming speech - whether ethnic, nationalist, religious, or cultural - as ‘dangerous’ or ‘hateful.’ They understand, better than their opponents, that the power to name is the power to unite.
To recap:
The language of Christianity provides an identity-affirming discourse that is accessible, legally defensible, and emotionally resonant.
Durkheim explains why this language is so powerful: it forges real bonds of solidarity, which the managerial class understands as a threat.
Traditional Christianity could serve as the foundation for a new elite: it already exists as a coherent body of thought, fosters deep internal cohesion, taps into existing Class II residues, and disrupts the managerial discourse of liberal rationalism.
When framed not merely as a belief system but as a binding, mythic language, Christianity becomes an engine of group mobilization, social solidarity, and power acquisition.
Even without widespread theological conversion, reviving traditional Christian language achieves exactly what the managerial class fears most: a people bound by a deep source of meaning that makes them independent of the bureaucratic structures that sustain managerial rule.
A new elite will not emerge through policy debates, procedural reforms, or appeals to reason. It will emerge through the restoration of thick, symbolic, identity-affirming language: through the conscious wielding of Christian tradition as both shield and sword.
It will be post-liberal and post-rational - rejecting the cold, procedural dialect of managerialism in favour of an older and deeper form of cohesion: the language of myth, ritual, and shared identity.
This is not just about religious revival. It is about the means to survive.
This strategy can place the managerial class in a lethal double-bind. If they attempt to suppress Christian language, they violate their own legal framework, provoking backlash, triggering religious freedom protections, and accelerating the very process they seek to contain. But if they permit its resurgence, they concede to a rival symbolic order - one that reintroduces hierarchy, identity, and myth, dissolving the procedural neutrality on which their rule depends. Either way, they lose.
This is not merely a challenge to the managerial regime; it is a trap from which they cannot escape. The return of meaning is a fatal paradox for an elite whose cynical reliance on bureaucratic formalism and ideological abstraction makes them powerless to resist it. Moreover, the return of Christian language initiates a process that, once set in motion, cannot be reversed without forcing the regime to drop its mask and resort to overt tyranny, thereby exposing its own illegitimacy and undermining its rule. This is devastating for a regime of Foxes, who are adept at deception but incapable of wielding force proportionately or effectively.
The future of the West will not be determined by policy arguments or procedural reforms. It will be determined by those who wield the power of language, myth, and meaning to galvanize attachment. The objective, then, should not be mere cultural or political critique. It should be the deliberate restoration of the affective, mythic language of traditional Christianity.
Restoring traditional Christian language is not an exercise in nostalgia. It is a calculated strategy for elite transformation. It may be difficult to initiate. But if set in motion, it will be unstoppable.
If this dynamic were actually unleashed, history could move very quickly. When elites lose control of the symbolic order, collapse can follow with astonishing speed. And if no competent replacement elite is prepared, chaos will fill the void. This makes it imperative not merely to revive Christian language, but to bind it explicitly to an aristocratic worldview capable of exercising power responsibly.
Pareto and Spengler both recognized that civilizational renewal hinges on the resurgence of Class II residues: strength, instinct, and will to power. Yet residues without a unifying symbolic language are inert – and language must be given life through action. The wielding of Christian language must not be passive; it must be enacted, ritualized, and performed through social practice.
Sceptics may claim that mass secularization presents an insurmountable obstacle. But this misunderstands the strategy. The goal is not immediate theological revival but the pragmatic restoration of affective Christian language as a living social force. This is not a theological project, but a civilizational one. Its strength lies in its adaptability: interdenominational, rooted in shared heritage, and capable of shaping new elites according to local conditions. And by reinvigorating affective Christian language, this strategy would lay the foundations for an organic return to Christian faith as its language once again saturates the social imagination.
Moreover, this approach circumvents sectarian divisions within Christendom. It is adaptable to specific historical and national conditions. The composition of a new elite would be shaped by local and national circumstances. The unifying factor is shared Christian heritage, not dogmatic conformity to a specific creed or set of propositions.
A more serious objection might be that this strategy risks instrumentalizing the sacred. But this is a false dichotomy. Christianity has always been a world-making force, shaping law, custom, and kingship across the West. If it is not wielded to uphold civilization, it will be trampled underfoot by those who impose alien gods in its place. Religious purity means nothing if there is no one left to uphold it.
We need a realist perspective. Survival comes first: without survival, there is no faith to protect – and no future to inherit. And ultimately, this strategy provides the best and most practical route towards a genuine re-evangelization of Western populations. The entire Western world is connected through its Christian heritage. Reviving its symbolic language can mobilize populations, reforge group cohesion, and initiate civilizational renewal.
Durkheim understood that religion is more than a set of dogmas or metaphysical assertions. He saw it as a symbolic system through which a society represents itself – its internal relations, its continuity across past and future, and its deepest sources of meaning. This is why he argued that ‘there really is a particle of divinity in us,’ because the soul is a fragment of the ‘great ideas which are the soul of the group.’ And after death, this soul lives on – but only as long as the group endures.3
This perspective allows us to see Christianity as more than a collection of dogmas about man and the cosmos. It is the structural logic of the Western world – the framework through which it has historically understood itself. If a religion is the collective representation of a society’s moral order, then Christianity is historically the West’s self-understanding: its native language of selfhood, and its way of relating to itself across time.
Christianity is therefore not an arbitrary ideological tool for social cohesion. It is the ineluctable destiny of Western civilization. Its suppression or decay is not merely a loss of faith, but a rupture in civilizational continuity. If Christianity fades, the West as such dissolves, not just as a geopolitical or cultural entity but as a meaningful category in human history.
In this sense, to revive Christianity is not merely to restore a valuable tradition. It is to reconstitute the West as a coherent entity, metaphysically and conceptually.
The language of traditional Christianity was recently echoed in symbolic fashion when the phrase ‘Christ is King’ emerged as a right-wing meme. Though often used provocatively and dismissed as mere internet sloganeering, this was also a potent symbolic gesture: an embryonic attempt to reclaim the mythic language of Christianity, even if only at a surface level. It reflects an instinctive recognition that real cohesion and identity cannot be forged through procedural neutrality or abstract values, and signals an awakening to the deeper truth that survival depends on a binding symbolic order.
However, this episode highlights another challenge: namely, that attempts to restore the language of traditional Christianity will be attacked as exclusionary to other faiths. Yet to reclaim our symbolic order is no more exclusionary than any group’s natural assertion of its own identity. This is not about excluding others, but about reaffirming the source of cultural and civilizational vitality. No people can endure if they allow external actors to dictate how they cultivate their own sense of meaning and purpose.
Today, mainstream establishment Christianity has been perverted by liberal-rationalist discourse, and promotes a pathological altruism which helps to corrode the foundations and fabric of Western life. Some, following Nietzsche, mistakenly conclude that Christianity leads inevitably to weakness and is the cause of civilizational exhaustion. In reality, returning to traditional Christianity would offer not weakness but immunity: a civilization-wide antibody against liberal decadence and external threats.
The West was built by a muscular Christianity – the faith of warriors, kings, and nation-builders. This was not a theology of surrender, like the abomination now wearing the skin of Western Christianity, but one of dominion: self-mastery, duty, and the sacred bonds of kin and culture. It can channel spiritual energy inward, strengthening the internal cohesion of the group, rather than dissipating it in futile attempts to uplift a hostile and indifferent world that will never reciprocate. It is not the deracinated, universalist liberalism of contemporary theology, which saps Western vitality and directs its energy outward in self-destructive altruism. It is the binding force of a civilization reclaiming its own identity.
Many on the right reject Christianity. But without affirming a unifying transcendent reality, right-wing politics inevitably culminates in a sort of aestheticized nihilism. Paganism, for instance, is incapable of inspiring the mass mobilization necessary for civilizational renewal. Unable to offer a viable alternative, it descends into a theatrical embrace of defeat and decline, producing an insular and self-defeating posture. Materialist ideologies, by contrast, ultimately collapse into managerialism. Exposing liberalism’s egalitarian delusions and disconnection from biological reality is important. But without a spiritual foundation, there is no answer to the real reason liberalism triumphed in the first place: the West’s loss of transcendent purpose. Even if secular conservatism were to restore order temporarily, it would be rebuilding on sand.
This is why Christianity, properly understood, is the only viable counter-revolutionary force. Christianity alone has the power to serve as a metaphysical anchor for the peoples of the West, organically binding them into something greater than themselves, and providing the sacred core around which a true aristocracy of purpose can form. As Wittgenstein observed, language defines the limits of our world. By restoring Christian language, we do not merely describe a past order – we reawaken its living structure.
This strategy is not confined to one nation. It would apply across the entire Western world, restoring social cohesion and offering a rediscovery of purpose. The spiritual benefits would be no less profound, reversing the decadence and despair that plague the West.
What would the rebirth of Western civilization look like? And what would it feel like to live in a world of transcendent purpose, high-trust communities, economic opportunity, rejuvenated art and culture, high birth rates, and social cohesion? A world where thoughts of the future inspired hope and excitement, instead of fear and despondency?
Would it not feel like a Second Coming?
And what calendrical milestone, freighted with Christian significance, takes place less than ten years from now? Is it not exactly two millennia since Christ died for our sins, conquered death, and rose from the tomb to new life?
Centuries of suppressing its mythic core have left the West defenceless against predation and decay. But now, precisely as its immune system collapses, we can identify the mechanism to revive it - and on a pan-Western scale. Spengler himself might have seen this as no mere coincidence, but as a fateful turning point: the symbolic end of an aeon where the brittle, rationalist scaffolding collapses and something primal and vital reemerges. The Second Religiousness.
The Second Religiousness is no mere regression. It is the fulfillment of a long cycle: a return to Christ through the language of Christ, armed with the hard-won knowledge of what came before. It is not a naive restoration, but a reconstitution of Western man, when he will once again feel the deep, healing, immunological force of a mythic vocabulary that protects, binds, and reorders. ‘For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.’ (1 Peter 1:23)
This shift can neither be rationally justified nor won through debate. Man cannot be persuaded or forced into faith. Faith emerges naturally once the obstructions of rationalism and ideology are cleared away. As Augustine said, ‘Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee’. Many who have experienced godlessness know that it demands an unnatural, exhausting resistance against divine truth. Faith restores harmony.
Like a spring breaking over parched ground, the return of Christian language will flow of its own accord - if we remove the dam. As in the early days of our faith, it must be spoken into life: the living Word that calls the West back to itself. The managerial class, and its discourse of liberal rationalism, will be powerless against it.
This is not just a cultural or political strategy. It is the path to rebirth.
The Fox and Lion metaphor comes from Machiavelli. It should be emphasized that neither is ‘better’ in an absolute sense: both types are important to the health of the elite and society as a whole.
The current unravelling of the UK Reform Party is a case in point, which reflects its accommodation to the liberal-rationalist regime in media and politics.
Durkheim’s framework explains the sociological importance of Christianity. This is of course only part of the truth. While Christianity undoubtedly sustains the symbolic continuity of Western civilization, it also offers the real hope of eternal life.