The 38 Based Reads of 2023
The best longreads on, about, and adjacent to the new right.
You’ve already read our *fun* list, “The 45 most powerful memes of 2023.” That was a good time, wasn’t it? Now it’s time to eat your vegetables, with a bunch of long-ass posts that redefine what it means to be TL;DR.
Just kidding! What a year for storytelling and new ideas on the new right.
In years’ past, august mainstream publications would publish lists of their best writing of the year, and aggregators like Longreads and Longform would curate pieces from around the entire web. And it was glorious. Pure gold, straight to your Kindle. But then, something changed, and just like everything else, those lists became cringe.
Well, this list isn’t cringe. In fact, it’s based.
Some of these pieces came from longstanding institutions, others came from crackpot loners. Some are true #longreads, the product of months of research. Others are bursts of passion. Some are written by self-identified right wingers, others are “about” or “adjacent to.” Be sure to scroll all the way to the bottom to see our Top 5 Reads of the Year.
The scene is so big now, and that means there is more content being created than we (actually one guy) could ever consume. We tried to capture as much as possible out there, but surely there are dozens and dozens of more fascinating, moving pieces we missed. Feel free to post your picks in the comments. Self-promotion encouraged!
Secondly, we know that online mags and individual Substackers gotta eat, and we respect that. However, if we can’t see it, it’s not going to get aggregated here. So only articles that aren’t paywalled will appear in our list.
On to the reads!
Bill Gates, the Global Depopulation Agenda, and What Is Actually Happening – Eugyppius (
)We know Bill Gates is a technomanagerialist button-pushing space lizard who wants the world to run like a game of Sim City, but does he really want to kill your grandma? Eugyppius investigates.
Honey, I hacked the Empathy Machine! – Aristophanes (
)Aristophanes experiments with a chatbot and realizes that the chatbots are just as smart as your average NPC on Twitter.
Realistic Prepper Advice – Kulak (
)We all indulge in apocalyptic fantasy, and we all like to think we’ll know exactly what to do when SHTF. This piece is like a bucket of cold water on the head for anyone who thinks they’ll be a badass road warrior, but its practical advice still makes for a fun read.
Identity politics and Synthetic Autism –
A challenging report on how the experience of using the internet serves as a kind of “synthetic autism,” which is turning us all into schizophrenic transwomen.
Toward a Functionalist Understanding of Religion, Pt. 3: Christo-Nietzschean Synthesis –
Christians will find much to dispute in Zero’s biggest, baddest essay of 2023, but no one can deny the immediacy of the topic. It’s full of gems, like calling Judas a “moralfag” for being butthurt about Mary Magdelene’s waste of the perfume on Jesus’ feet. Or eternal aphorisms like this:
Honorable mention: Messianic Onlineism and the Spirit of ‘16 (The Asylum)
Clearpill yourself on Gaza – Curtis Yarvin (
)In the aftermath of October 7th, Yarvin warned us of the dangers of feeling globally.
Whew lad, this essay does what it says on the tin, trying to untangle an extremely controversial topic with honesty, accounting for nuance, and covering every possible base.
A beautiful tribute to the late Sinéad O’Connor, failed by institutions, who never escaped her own troubled mind.
Taught for America (Andrew X. Evans for
)A pseudonymous guest author wrote a piece for Wesley Yang’s Substack, which allowed him or her to speak some uncomfortable truths that you’ll never hear from a teacher under their real name.
The kids are not alright, and this guest author thinks that chucking our babies into the arms of caretakers who can’t truly love them is part of the problem.
The diversity myth – Peter Thiel (The New Criterion)
Peter Thiel’s essay on the “idol” of diversity that we all worship.
Report on the Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Top 50 Organizations to Know (
)Hard to pick just one article from Matt Taibbi, but this piece – easily the longest of the year’s best – took the cake. Taibbi started the year off with a bang, in mid-release of the Twitter Files. And this mid-year story is an intimidating but worthwhile follow-up. His team systematically breaks down the various factions and players that make up what he calls the Censorship-Industrial Complex.
Everyone is checking out – Alex Kaschuta (
)It’s not just guys – everyone is dropping out. Young people aren’t building families, or even careers. Alex applies her outside-in perspective as a Girlboss-turned Eastern Euro housefrau to examine why.
There was a lot of mainstream coverage of the New Right this year, but this one is the least condescending, with many cameos from your favorite e-right personalities.
It Knows We're Here to Kill It – Isaac Simpson (
)Right-wing adman contextualizes the Bud Light controversy as a distinct vibe shift for his field, and one that the right can exploit.
Honorable mention: This piece from an anon on working in a corporate longhouse, edited/published by Isaac, is a must-read.
Why the right can’t beat ESG – Julius Krein (Compact)
ESG is as American as apple pie, says Julius Krein, and killing it might mean killing a few darlings of market liberalism.
Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theory –
(IM-1776)A distillation of his exhaustive, must-listen 3-part podcast analysis from last year. If you ever listen to anything about Epstein, make it this.
How the government created lyme disease –
(IM-1776)Essential schizo-post that will make you second-guess any confidence you have in the ability of our institutions to own up to their own failures.
Managerial Christianity – Kruptos (
)Kruptos has emerged this year as one of the fiercest advocates for politically muscular Christianity. But first, the Church must get its house in order. In this piece, Kruptos critiques how managerialism has infected the Church just as it infected the rest of our institutions.
The New Knighthood – Mark Bisone (
)Mark offered some tactical advice for distributed dissidents: A new knightly order.
Marx was not woke – @Paul Gottfried (Chronicles)
Gottfried wasn’t the only one banging this drum in 2023, but his argument is among the most convincing.
Johann Kurtz is probably our favorite new writer of 2023. Everything he writes is self-contained, measured, clarified, and wise. One of our true leading lights, and someone to watch.
Honorable mention: Kurtz’s jeremiad against passive sportzball is also worth your time.
The Populist Moment Never Happened – Bronze Age Pervert (Man’s World)
A look at the rise of Argentina’s Milei, finding it wanting for real, lasting change.
An Actual Defense of Anonymity –
(Man’s World)Mr. Natty mounts a case for the virtues of total anonymity, not to be confused with pseudonymity, which enables the poster to build a reputation that he may one day trade in for money and prestige.
All in Good Fun – Mike Crumplar (
)Mike’s a filthy commie who disappeared because he felt bad that he wasn’t doing enough to villainize the right wing dark elves of Dimes Square, but nobody else was doing Tom-Wolfe-style IRL metacommentary like him, so he is missed. In this legendary piece, he gets walloped on the schnozzola by Dasha.
This was the first piece we ever read of Yuri’s, one man’s ode to a world-class city that gradually slipped into anarcho-tyranny over the course of about fifteen years.
If No One’s Hiring White Guys, What Are They Doing With Themselves? – John Carter (
)John Carter dug into the Bloomberg report about how companies basically stopped hiring white people after the pandemic and found that it’s really as bad as it looks at first glance.
Honorable mention: The Bud Light Military
Breeding Our Way Out – Bennett’s Demilich (
)Bennet makes his grand case for natalism as a stand against the encroachment of globohomo. The machine means war, and the only way to fight it is to carve out a meaningful life for a very large family.
The Merchant Spirit – Sanfedisti (
)“Real life isn’t a debate society,” says Cernovich, quoted here by Sanfedisti. A helpful reminder that it’s power wot really matters.
Between Suicide and Murder – Giles Hoffman (The American Mind)
Giles Hoffman does what few right wing wordcels dare to do: actually go to a place and talk to some people in order to write about it. The TexMex border is a strange (dare we say liminal?) space that deserves an up-close POV, and this one comes as close as any to explaining the place’s contradictions and absurdities.
This story opens with a child burial pit under a brothel, and it doesn’t get brighter from there. Louise detects in Western decline a pagan flavor.
Honorable mention: We will all become boring (Maiden Mother Matriarch)
Mass Shootings and the World Liberalism Made –
(Contra)Katherine Dee argues that it’s liberalism that created the conditions for nihilism and narcissism to fester and explode into mass gun violence.
Hard Times And The White Wargus – Morgoth (
)It’s getting bad out there, and the women crying into their phones in TikTok videos are perhaps canaries in the coal mine. We would do well to listen to their anguish.
📰The Top 5 Most Based Reads of the Year📰
Here it is, folks. The cream (of the cream) of the crop. The best of the based, the Top 5.
What is the Longhouse? – Lomez (First Things)
Sometimes an essay comes along that weaves together several complimentary threads, and totally crystalizes a moment. In 2023, it was not even close – Lomez’s longhouse piece for First Things picked up where BAP left off and created the year’s biggest and most useful meme. BAP defined the longhouse as the proto European matriarchal society that was wiped away by Steppe people and their masculine pantheon. Today it just means having to update your Product Mommy’s Jira ticket in order to take a piss.
Pygmalion and the Anime Girl –
Billionaire Psycho wrote a sprawling, blackpilling essay on how massive, intractable, paralyzing social and economic forces have created widespread sexual and social dysfunction and immiseration, and how snide, individualist calls for young men to bootstrap their way out of the pit of despair are pointless. If someone asks you why you are attracted to the new right, why you’ve given up on liberalism, show them this essay.
The China Convergence – N.S. Lyons (
)N.S. Lyons wrote a book-length essay about the techno-managerial similarities between the U.S. and China. This piece lays out the central question that Lyon’s blog will dedicate itself to answering: OK, so we’re moving toward “an all-encompassing regime of algorithmic gaslighting and fully-automated narrative management” via social credit, AI surveillance/censorship, what do we do about it?
Honorable mentions: Lyon’s “No, the Revolution Isn’t Over” (on whether or not wokeness is on the wane), and “Reality Honks back,” (on Canadian trucker protests) were also quite well-received.
What Progress Wants – Paul Kingsnorth (
)This mf spent half the year poking around moldy old wells, and somehow still managed to produce some of the finest critiques of techno-managerial modernity out there.
Honorable mentions: Kingsnorth’s series on what the internet wants (Part One, and Part Two) is also excellent.
Complex Systems Won’t Survive the Competence Crisis – Harold Robertson (Palladium)
Our society is kept barely afloat by complex, interlocking systems which require relentless oversight by autistic graybeards with niche, god-level expertise. The push for diversity has constricted that type of person’s career development, so get ready for cascading failure.
Thanks for reading. If you like the best new right longreads in your inbox, twice a week, subscribe to the New Right Poast for free. And check out a few:
More Honorable Mentions:
Would You like a McFamily with That? –
Gang Weed Conservatism Parts I-VI – Marcel Dumas Gautreau (
)World Plummets into Eschatological Frenzy: Unraveling the Implication (
)The Media is a Monster that Eats Advertising – Paulos (
)An Idol Crumbles – Dave Greene (
)Mimicry and mastery – Duncan Reyburn (
)America's Age of the Feuilleton – Theophilius Chilton (
)Holy Abortion – Samira Kawash (First Things)
The Statistic No One's Allowed To Study – Mary Harrington (
)Wake Up: An Interview With MythoAmerica – John Flowers (Contere)
The Cultural Power of Elite Immigrants – Cremieux (
)Many thanks to
, , , and especially erstwhile aggregator, for their help and feedback as we put this list together.
Excellent list, but I feel the absence of Library of Celaeno is a grievous omission.
While the good Librarian has written many eye-opening and paradigm-shattering posts, this one is still my favorite. I think about it at least once a week:
https://open.substack.com/pub/librarianofcelaeno/p/the-koala-a-creature-for-our-time?r=ih18i&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Thanks for the nod, NRP.
A truly mystical listicle of dangerous, dastardly words and minds you've compiled here. I'm honored to be in their company.