Philip Pilkington

1/ The @Harvard foreign student ban is the clearest indication that America is in the midst of a serious revolution right now - easily comparable to the end of USSR. But our preconceptions - political and intellectual - prevent us from seeing this reality. 🧵 

2/ Let’s start with @Harvard. It is the keystone on the entire US elite class. The American system is a “credential aristocracy”. Harvard is the top of the credentialising pyramid. Without Harvard the rest of the system - populated with Harvard grads - starts to fail. 

3/ This system encompasses the Global Liberal Empire the US sustains. Harvard graduates - or those trained at the feet of Harvard graduates - are the American liberal vassals that are placed in positions of power globally. 

4/ The Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive attacks on Harvard are undermining the credibility of the system. It is not dissimilar to when a King - say, Henry VIII - starts to attack the Church. 

5/ Does the Trump administration understand this? 100%. The administration is full of young radicals most of whom have been through the Harvard or Harvard-adjacent credentialising process. @JDVance is the most visible of these but there are many more. 

6/ It is quite typical for revolutionaries who overthrow political systems to be produced by the system. Robespierre, for example, went through the Ancien Regime’s credentialising system with support from King Louis XVI’s state. 

7/ Revolutions are almost never started from “outside” the system because those outside do not know how to attack it. That is why real revolutions are always an insider game. 

8/ So why can’t most people see that the situation in America is revolutionary? Firstly, because politically we have come to associate revolutions with the political left. 

9/ But this is misleading. Revolutions are simply a rapid cycling of elites, where an incumbent elite - usually one that is dysfunctional - is eliminated and replaced with a new elite. They have happened throughout human history, long before the left-right divide emerged. 

10/ The second reason we cannot recognise the nascent revolution is because we think revolutions must have a new vision of society - communism or Jacobinism or whatever - but again the reality is just one of elite cycling. 

11/ But it is imperative that people recognise what is happening in America as a revolution because revolutions are forces of nature. They are not driven by intellect but by instinct. 

12/ Judging political outcomes of revolutions in terms of success, failure or even morality is pointless. Revolutions destroy. Their aim is to focus energy to destroy the institutions that were too rigid to integrate desire for change and which thereby provoked the revolution. 

13/ Watching, say, @LHSummers talk about the attacks on Harvard in terms of “outcomes” is like watching a man screaming at the tide to stop washing up on the beach. 

14/ Likewise when the revolutionary forces inevitably lead to chaotic outcomes, anyone saying “I told you so” is just being a bore. The revolution happened because the socio-political forces necessitated it. The elite had a chance to address the causes. They failed. End of story. 

15/ It is too late for the revolutionary moment in America to be contained - probably a decade or so too late. Smart people will accept the revolutionary forces for what they are. Dinosaurs will dig in and get steamrolled. 