Martin Sellner is one of the most prominent identitarian activists in Europe today. Many in the English-speaking world are aware of him as an activist, but he is also a prominent thinker. Until now, his thought has been inaccessible to English speakers. This new English translation of Regime Change from the Right makes Sellner’s thought available to the Anglosphere for the first time.
This book deals with the most burning question of our how do we save our peoples from dispossession and demographic replacement?
Sellner’s answer Reconquista. The right must achieve metapolitical dominance—cultural and intellectual power—to delegitimise our opponents, shift the Overton Window, and make it possible for these issues to be openly discussed and for the implementation of alternative policies to become politically feasible. This strategy, for moral and pragmatic reasons, is resolutely non-violent.
In addition, this book examines strategies other than Sellner’s, analysing where they have succeeded and failed, making it useful even for those who disagree with Sellner’s conclusions. It is sure to spark a badly needed strategic debate on the right.
Informed by years of experience in activism and extensive reading, Regime Change from the Right is essential reading for anyone who is concerned about the future of European peoples, and looking for a path forward.
Martin Sellner is an Austrian Neue Rechte activist, leader of the Identitäre Bewegung Österreichs (IBÖ, Identitarian Movement of Austria), and a part of the alt-right movement.
In 2008, he helped leading Austrian Neo-Nazis hinder liberal demonstrations and made pilgrimages to memorial services for Wehrmacht soldiers.
In March 2018, he was denied entry and deported from the United Kingdom.
I just got it on a whim because I stumbled across him on the uncensored intertube. The part I read so far was surprisingly interesting. His thinking is very clear, and he uses big, nuanced words without sounding pretentious. He feels a bit like a Marxist strategist, an Alinsky of the other side. I think he even quotes some Marxists in his theory framework. The author, of course, had his home raided by the thought police for his expressions. Apparently the Austrians are applying some anti-mafia law to forbidden speech now. The book explains why these repressions are increasing now: they are compensating for the declining dominance of the old "metapolitical" narrative; a term that refers to the amassed political 'education' (aka. public enlightenment) of the population, i.e. their standing assumption of who to obey, from which the current elite derives its power. It is this metapolitical background assumption that Sellner wants to reform with his activism. It is also why old power structures are so hysterical about censoring other viewpoints; the battle of ideas seems to determine which way the guns point, and from that comes political power. It is interesting that "wanting the population to survive" has become a "far right extreme" position, for which you get dragged out of bed by the thought police. Isn't it just the natural duty of any government to aid the survival of its population? [CENSORED] As such Sellner doesn't even need to style himself as an identitarian; his position could be framed as the much more palatable "neutrality" or "non-interference".
[CENSORED DUE TO SPEECH PERSECUTION] From a long-term libertarian perspective, the destruction of the rule of law, such as the legalization of left-wing terrorism for use as convenient foot soldiers, can be seen as an (almost necessary) sign of the breakdown of old power structures. [CENSORED]
This book was mostly just a black pill for me, the main reason being that what he's describing is going to take too long and require a degree of organization and intellectualism that doesn't currently exist on the right.
He's essentially advocating for using Marxist/Gramscian social engineering strategies to reform the general zeitgeist, from within which you can shift the Overton window. This is obviously the best tactic and I've been advocating this for some years now. The biggest problem now though is that first of all we don't have decades to perform our own long march through the institutions, particularly as technology is advancing and the left is becoming explicitly totalitarian and happy to use those technological mechanisms to exert control.
The other problem, which is made very acute by the time crunch, is that the right is incredibly fractured ideologically, and the degree of intellectualism and organizational cohesion required to execute his plan literally does not exist, nor do I think it realistically will. A lot of this is due to the fragmentary nature of the right currently, but a lot has to do with the particular characteristics of Gen Z, some of which are really unfortunate (lower overall IQ, broadly ignorant on both the left and the right, don't tend to read books, Very Online, more entitled and less disciplined). It's worth noting that Sellner is a millennial and is probably writing this with our generation in mind whether he realizes it or not.
So while I agree that this strategy is the preferred one in an ideal world, my observations over the last year or two have made it equally clear to me that this is wildly unrealistic for the above reasons. I think we're cooked actually.
And while I'm not European, an aspect of the situation that's conspicuously missing for European contexts is that the EU will simply not allow this. The assumption by Europeans and the international right broadly that the National Rally or AfD are going to be allowed to win elections rather than simply having the results nullified by Brussels (i.e. Romania) is crazy. I can't understand why they are clinging in their minds to a delusional vision of the EU that does not exist, and because of that they have not quite arrived yet at the realization that the EU is on its way to being fully totalitarian in the model of the CCP. There will be no pathway forward for the right while the EU exists. And this does apply to North Americans too - Canada is literally trying to integrate into the EU, and the Democratic party in America is going to align with them on everything, particularly speech censorship. While technically geared towards Europeans, this book was translated because Sellner recognized that this is a battle we are all fighting together, and our strategies and outlooks should align. So therefore, any plan without a way forward with regard to the inherently anti-democratic totalitarianism of the EU is incomplete.
In terms of the book itself, it was a bit of a slog. It's not long but it's very dry and has an overreliance on kind of intellectually infantilizing metaphors that became annoying to read after a while. If you're writing high level theory you don't need to overuse childish metaphors that would normally be used for general audiences, because general audiences aren't reading this book. That's the reason I rated it down slightly.
The Western Right, in order to fulfill its primary objective (the maintenance of our demographic power in our own homelands) must have an effective and well-thought out strategy. This book attacks certain strategies, such as Parliamentary Patriotism and Militancy as fundamentally flawed and not effective for succeeding with the primary objective. Instead the author offers the "Reconquista" strategy, which clearly defines the roles of the different parts of the Right-wing, including the Party, the Counter-Narrative Space and the Movement, and how they can work together to push the Overton Window, gain mass metapolitical power, gain legitimacy, and save our nations.