Ejected? No. Made the sole pillar of the counter revolution? Absolutely not. A movement around a person rises and falls with said person. A movement around an idea endures long after said person is gone. Its why we still have to deal with marxism 150 years after the death of Marx, and very few marxists even really like the guy himself.
Sure you can. Ideology js more than the people who follow them. If your principles are sound, you don't need the strong leader, as another one can take its place as long as they align closely enough with its values.
Thats how the left infects new people with their ideologies. Only difference is once they lose power the ideas have to compete until a new orthodoxy emerges. Hence why social justice is so radically against many of the old communist talking points.
On the flip side, the founding principles of conservatism more or less can remain the same so long as its system remains. Sure, populism can help, but no person is without sin and populism is not required to win. Besides, people have whims, ideas do not, meaning even with imperfect people, as long as their ideas are sound, you can point to accomplishments.
Indeed. An ideology around a single individual rises and falls with said individual, and very few can triump for long.
If the new right is going go have a future, it needs a stronger set of principles than just "trump", and it needs a way to articulate said principles beyond a single compromised mouthpiece.
Yet despite our attempts to bring them up to speed on how to fight the new digital culture war, they still have not taken the lessons to heart. Things like the distrusting of corporations, the three rules of sjws and fighting against alinskyism, the recognition of academia, social media companies and mass media as the enemy, how to mobilize under their noses, and they still refuse to accept the social landscape change of the last 15-30 years.
The trick going forward will be using these compromised positions as gateways to the truth. Not to treat them as truth or trustworthy in and of themselves, but to piggyback off them to get the normies to dig deeper themselves. Give the normies enough cognitive dissonance to make them go looking for a way to reconcile it. Or use their social media presence as a way to bring people deeper into the net.
Seems the world is primed for an Augustinian revival. Humanity, despite is belief in its own superiority, has shown itself to be broken and sinful, and no amount of progress undoes it. We simply become more creative in our methods of oppressing and exploiting each other.
Fortunately, Augustinianism does leave us a way out, while acknowledging that the promised kingdom will only exist in glimmers and fragments. We won't be perfect anytime soon, but the good news is we don't have to be. We just have to try to live into that better life.
Nietzsche's madman noted he came to early to declare the death of God. I would argue that humanity will never be able to seperate itself from religion, especially for all of the reasons you outlined.
Humanity cannot save itself, our own arrogance powered by our knowledge will destroy us. We saw this arrogance on full display 100 years ago with the first world war, and we see it again with social justice losing its christian context and attaching itself to an ideology.
As the writer of Ecclesiastes wrote:
And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow. - Ecclesiastes 1:17-18
We had similar things in the 80s and 90s with cops coming into schools and asking if kids recognized certain types of drug paraphimalia. These 5 and 6 year olds would rat out their parents just by saying they had seen the object in question before.
I don't feel strongly on the issue, but its not like we haven't done similar things.
St. Augustine's City of God, for most of the same reasons you outlined, just from the opposite perspective. I see the Augustinian approach to issues of evil, human nature, governance, and relationships coming back in vogue in the next few decades.