“Bhosaḍpillers” refer to people who endlessly seethe and complain about the Man in the Arena (those actually doing things, e.g. BJP leadership), without ever doing anything themselves. They come in two types:
Type-A bhosaḍpilling: seething at The Man in the Arena for doing too much; randomly becoming an obstacle in order to virtue-signal.
Examples:
moderate right-wingers virtue-signalling to chastise the Modi government for “going too far”
- rāytās (whose right-wing beliefs are restricted to some narrow parochialism due to Gell-mann amnesia with the Leftist Ideological Aether, section 4.3.1) chastising them for doing right-wing things outside their narrow parochialism
libertarians and “man of honour”-LARPers chastising them for playing dirty.
The other thing, specifically with regard to the “playing dirty” example, is: power is power.
This is why Classical Liberalism lost to Left-liberalism. Classical Liberalism suffered from Yudhiṣṭhira syndrome, restraining itself out of “principles”, even as its enemy showed no such principles. The world is populated by intelligent beings trying to maximize their goals. If you let go of any opportunity for power out of “principle”, someone else will seize it and use it against you.
Ideology is not truly orthogonal to execution.The path to power may involve authoritarian policies, it may involve libertarian policies, it may involve cronyist policies. It may involve compromise, it may involve making alliances with people not totally in alignment with you. It may involve RETVRNing to tradition, or it may involve adapting to modernity. If you let “principles” restrain your pursuit of power, you will lose.
If you restrain yourselves from purging your enemies’ “free speech” when necessary, you will lose. If you restrain yourself from getting filmmakers to fall in line with your ideology, you will lose. If you restrain yourself from rewarding those who support you, you will lose. If you restrain yourself from curbing the demographics of those who want to kill you, you will lose. The path to power may be hard to stomach for an ideologue. But flinch from it, and you will lose.
NOTHING is possible without power, and nothing is worse than losing.
Maybe you want to keep your hands clean. That’s fine. But at least be thankful to the goy who presses the lift buttons for you. At least be thankful to the Bhīma who strikes Duryodhana in the thigh and takes the bad karma for you. Learn to stay silent when we do the dirty work for you.
Win first. We can change the game once we win it.
Type-B bhosaḍpilling: seething at The Man in the Arena for “not doing enough”/not being ideologically pure-pure-pure enough.
Examples:
Ideologically hardline right-wing groups (Libertarians, Trads, Merit warriors, Based-LARPers) upset at the Modi government for not being libertarian/trad/merit/based enough
The section of the orthodoxy that opposed Shivaji’s coronation due to caste autism.
For Type-B bhosaḍpilling: does this mean that you should never criticize your side and its leaders? No: after all, we went into length in section 3.3 describing how Leftists cleverly use good-cop bad-cop and “the system’s critique of itself” to recast the political spectrum in their own image—so that everyone ends up “competing to become the most Leftist”. Whether such self-criticism works or not—whether you are a bhosaḍpiller or a bad-cop—depends on the following factors (↑ means good to self-criticize when this factor is higher; ↓ means bad):
Practical persuadability outside the base ↑. Stuff that bhosaḍpillers talk about cannot persuade people outside the coalition (e.g. reservations are currently entirely a game of factional gibs-seeking), so your seething and arguing don’t move the Overton window or have any hope of making the solution more politically feasible—they just cause polarization. If you do want to address these problems you are going to have to come up with a clever Coasean bargain favourable to all, not yell and seethe or make “arguments” all day.
Importance of person being criticized ↓. Modi is very important (and even all those who may succeed him are closely associated with him). Mamdani is easily replaceable, both in politics and in the culture war. In general the left has this benefit of having a high bus factor: they depend less on “great men” and more on the whole Cathedral.
Salience of issue to the base ↓. Is the issue is something that the normies (i.e. not political activists/extremists) of your base care about? BJP’s core base (not hard-RW ideologues) are moved by talk of reservations and taxes, normie-libs who voted for Mamdani won’t really be put off by “he condemned an anti-semitic attack” or whatever.
Intelligence of audience ↑. How smart is the audience that the internal criticism is performed in front of? Leftists have enough clarity about their ideology to still know whom to support, etc. A good chunk of our guys are bholā enough to “teach a lesson” to BJP, or just get demotivated by the bhosaḍpilling.
Agenticness of your side ↑. How agentic are both the bhosaḍpiller and the audience? Leftists don’t demotivate their base when they bhosaḍpill, because they offer their own path i.e. for leftist ideologues, leftist activism etc is their entire life. They don’t need a leader to be passionate about.
The grounds the criticism is on (your side vs enemy’s side) ↑. Muslim in-fighting in their countries often strengthens Islam, because the fight is aimed at the goal of proving oneself the better Muslim and the better Jihadi—similarly in-fighting within the Left and between the Left and liberals creates a good-cop-bad-cop spectrum. But in-fighting in a way that affirms the enemy’s beliefs, generating positive externalities for the enemy, is disastrous.
6.2.1The things-are-hard pill
BUILD THE SWITCH.
Ok. I see the “just flip the switch” thing a lot now from the right.
But while I’m sympathetic to the desire for law and order, and agree that is a direction worth pursuing, there’s an illusion that should be addressed.
Leftists think you can get money without working for it. Just flip the switch on the money printer. Just flip the switch to tax the rich. But in reality, resources are scarce.
Rightists often similarly think you can get political power without working for it. Just flip the switch to throw the criminals in jail. But in reality, votes (or political supporters in general) are scarce just like resources are.
So the hard part is the invisible part of building that political base. Why were those criminal gangs on the streets of El Salvador? Because they had a drug dealer business model, and because Western leftists were paid by NGOs to support them. They were actually politically powerful.
Thus, what was needed to disrupt them? A better political business model, one that actually generated more political support than the legacy model.
[...] there was no switch that Bukele inherited to flip, anymore than Elon inherited the switch to launch a SpaceX rocket. Bukele essentially had to build a new state from scratch, via the Internet. A new state that was loyal to the people of El Salvador rather than the criminal gangs.
This was nontrivial.
He had to build the switch.
Reject bluepill/redpill/blackpill/whitepill.
Instead embrace these two pills:
You can just do things.
But doing things is hard and takes incredible effort and agency.
Embrace agency for yourself, while also understanding that winning is hard—yes, even for those “in power”, even for those for whom it’s their job.
6.2.2You’re not special for figuring out the perfect ideology
yes very great, u will build a great Hindu raj out of ur 1000 members of the pure sub sub sub sub sub sub jati. china, amreeka, sullas r all quaking in their boots abt facing such a mighty enemy
yes very great, u will build a great Libertarian raj out of ur 1000 members of the pure sub sub sub sub sub sub pixel on the political compass. LeLis, Commies, jātitvādīs r all quaking in their boots abt facing such a mighty enemy
(paraphrased)
Earlier this year, a bunch of 45-year old bachelors and snot-faced zoomers decided that they were blackpilled by the Modi government because it wasn’t libertarian enough, and decided to start a new party. And they did, they created some meme party called the “Libertarian Party of India”, which was never more than a few social media handles and alcoholics-anonymous-type meet-ups. It ultimately crashed and burned when it was uncovered that they were bizarrely obsessed with increasing Bangladeshi Muslim immigration into India, and had also committed literal treason (joined in with the Biden SEC in their politically-motivated lawsuit against Adani).
I take much of the credit for whipping them to death. I didn’t enjoy it. You see: my first introduction to right-wing politics was through libertarianism, after I took a political compass test as a kid and it put me in the Lib Right quadrant saying “your views are closest to Milton Friedman”. As far as actual policies go I am still basically a libertarian (definitely on economics, and on some important social issues like guns and hate speech laws, though for non-libertarian reasons)—and I am certainly far more educated on economics and libertarianism than any of those potbellied unkils.
But here’s the thing: politics isn’t just about policy and ideology. This whole “We need a new (libertarian/traditionalist/dharma/merit) party; BJP is not enough” meme perfectly captures the total lack of understanding of politics on the Autistic Right. Politics is not about just having the correct opinions, supporting anyone who expresses the same opinions, and autistically calculating which party is closest to your positions. As we described in chapter 1, politics is about both ideology (having the right beliefs) and execution (actually getting things done).
Having the right ideology is easy. You are not a genius for having figured it out; nor is everyone else who figured it out a genius whom you now need to become chaḍḍi-buddies with or simp for.
The thing that was funniest to me about these libertarians’ antics was their repeated insistence that “BJP is socialist, Modi-Shah don’t understand capitalism”.
... really? The guys who
took India from Rank 142 to Rank 63 in Ease of Doing Business
crushed the Naxal insurgency
doubled our highway network in 10 years
doubled the number of functional airports in the country, created a massive expansion in ports, urban transit, canals, logistics all led by private-players
proposed the farm bill and land acquisition bill
are pushing farm/land/labor deregulations at the state level in the states where it is politically possible
incubated a very impressive defense startup ecosystem you saw in action during Operation Sindoor
implemented the world’s most successful DOGE & anti-corruption initiative with Direct Benefit Transfer and UPI
do not KNOW?
“It’s not enough. 6-7% growth is not enough, we need to catch up with China sooner.”
I hear you.
But Gujarat exists. Gujarat exists to show what Modi’s vision for India is. Which means that the bottleneck to “doing more” is not wrong ideology, but that things-are-hard. That executing is hard. No petty suspicion thrown at Modi could ever stick ... because Gujarat exists.
Does this mean Modi is secretly a libertarian ideologue who lands exactly on your sub-sub-pixel of the political compass? Obviously not.
But it’s irrelevant. Even if you see Modi as an imperfect figure (he’s not, btw), you do not have the luxury of lashing out at everyone who is not from your sub-sub-pixel.
The bottleneck—which you will not solved by “starting a new party” or bhosadpilling against the BJP, but rather requires great agenticness and effort from you and from all of us—is execution: things don’t simply happen at the stroke of a pen.
Ask yourself less: “What differentiates me (ideologically) from Modi, Yogi, BJP?” and more:
“What differentiates me (in achievement) from Milton Friedman, Javier Milei, Elon Musk?” (if you’re a libertarian)
“What differentiates me from Puṣyamitra Śuṅga or Ādi Śankara?” (if you are a “trad”)
“What differentiates me (in achievement) from Modi?” (for any member of the Autistic Right)
What is it that lets these guys execute our ideology and actually get their ideas implemented while you jerk it listening to a podcast between some kid and a homeless guy? It’s a hard question. It’s easy to get lost in kayfabe: become friends with everyone who has the same ideology! Start a “centre for liberty”! Start a party! Give interviews to the media!
... you will get manipulated by bad-faith actors like American “centrist YIMBY abundance liberals”1 who say all the right things while actually working for the Left. In fact, you will be manipulated into supporting anything as long as it is coated in libertarian sprinkles. You will support cracking down on businesses because they’re “actually crony capitalists not capitalists”. You will support draconian environmental regulations because “negative externalities!”. You will vote for some third-party because “both parties are socialist anyway”.(if you don’t believe me, look at all the American “centrist YIMBY abundance liberals” falling over for Zohran Mamdani.)
6.2.3Elected government is not omnipotent and omniscient
“Why didn’t you do X earlier? You have been in government for 11 years, you didn’t find the time to do this one simple thing?”
While there can certainly be low-hanging fruits left unplucked by the Modi government—I do not claim they are infinitely competent—the overuse of this line of criticism by their demanding supporters exposes a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of power. Namely, it imagines a government that is omnipotent and omniscient.
The government is not omnipotent:
Competing blocks of power. The elected government is only one of the many “commanding heights of power” (section 2.1.5, section 4.1), which include not only formal arms of the state or “hard power” like the courts, bureaucracy and foreign regime change operations but also various institutions such as media, academia and civil society groups—all of these are controlled by the Enemy, the Left-liberal Rāj. For instance on a pure policy level, the COVID lockdowns were a terrible mistake. But one can look at the example of Brazil to see what would have happened to us if the government had not complied with the Left-liberal consensus on this matter.
Consensus. Popular consensus (and especially consensus among the Elite and Midwit Human Capital) matters for two reasons: (a) democracy, and (b) those who man the other commanding heights of power are ultimately recruited from the same public (yes really), and believe what they believe. In the case of India, people really forget just how much the Overton window has shifted since 2014. Modi had to strictly and completely avoid even talking about any religious/cultural matters in 2014, beyond raising the point of “pseudo-secularism”. When asked “are you a Hindu nationalist?” he answered “What does that term mean? I’m a Hindu and I’m a nationalist.” After getting elected, in the first speech he joked about “green revolution” (agriculture), “white revolution” (dairy) and “saffron revolution”—it gave everyone in the room a jolt and then he grinned and said he was talking about solar energy.
“Why didn’t you do it in the last 11 years?” Because you wouldn’t have supported it!
A particularly idiotic meme of the bhosaḍpillers is “Congress says and BJP implements”, i.e. that BJP also supports all the rotten Leftist ideas of Congress (caste census, freebies, interest-free loans to waqf, etc) but implements them with a delay, “blackmailing voters with the prospect of Congress coming to power”.
It is so self-evidently stupid to suggest that BJP has a vested interest in any of these. The only reason we’re even speaking about half of these things is because electing Modi brought it into the Overton window.
Midwit Human Capital. Many policy changes are not simply made at the flip of a switch—but rather require the Midwit Human Capital to labour for it, which the right is defecient in. The disinformation campaign against the new NCERT textbooks over the Swarajya map is a good illustration of why these things take time when you lack Midwit Human Capital: the NCERT map is straightforwardly correct and the books are very factual and even-handed; yet it still takes effort to defend it. Imagine if the government had instead rushed it or tastelessly picked some schizo grifters to write the books (which our side is teeming with).
Think about how it is often difficult to get something done against rival factions even in your own place of employment—and there everyone’s interests are still basically aligned (you want to maximize the company’s profits etc), whereas the government has to deal with rival ideological factions whose interests are diametrically opposed to the nation’s.
Take, for example, the example of Waqf:
in democracies, power is relatively diffused: thus the key bottlenecks are the ideological aether, balance of power of competing blocs, and lack of information about the problem.
Ideological aether: the previous Congress regime firmly believed that Muslims were a sovereign nation within themselves and nobody else should interfere in their matters (or indeed any matter that would affect them) without their approval. That ideology persists today among a large chunk of the elite.
Balance of power: the previous Congress regime’s ideology remains strong among courts and other institutions. Muslims have street power and ability to mobilize (largely due to its enablement by the previous Congress regime): if you go head to head with them before achieving a similar strength or cutting down their street power (both of which are hard problems in themselves), you will lose many innocent Hindu civilian lives.
Lack of information: most people including Hindutva elites did not really know much about Waqf act because no one in the media or academia reported on it before.
BJP winning a majority in the election does not change these factors: though it does give them the power to gradually resolve these issues in our favour, which it has done in its second term.
None of this however downplays the importance of your side being the elected government. Apart from the explicit formal benefits (your policies getting passed), being in power also sends a signal to all the other kingmakers and commanding heights of power to co-ordinate on a new Schelling point. For example, we all understand that the construction of the Rām Mandir, or the various great Aditya Dhar films, or the overall shift in the Overton window would not have happened if not for the Modi government, even though technically these all fall under the domains of different commanding heights of power. This is also why the Left focuses so much on building a counter-movement (e.g. the “Resistance”) when it is out of elected government—to keep its base constantly mobilized and retaining its passion.