On the Bunker State and the Ideological Function of Domestic Narratives A central characteristic of what I call the Bunker State—a concept I am actively researching and detailing still—is the emergence of a total ideology that is openly dichotomous, supremacist, and latently violent. This is coming to the fore largely because capital no longer faces systemic competition from an alternative and coherent bloc at scale; there is no longer an imperial necessity to persuade or buy domestic peace. Thus, the unvarnished coercion and ideological openness characteristic of classic colonial rule has returned. This shift carries structural implications. Just as political and economic elites are interpellated—hailed by the imperatives of capitalism and imperialism into their functional roles, shaping even their psychological makeup—the transition from unipolarity to multipolarity within a capitalist world system demands a corresponding mutation in the dominant political narrative or formation. What happens when the previous narrative of liberalism, legalism, and human rights (always an ideological veneer) weakens or is rewritten, reassembled? What becomes administratively, militarily, and socially possible? A liberal narrative can legitimate selective, technocratic rearmament. But a supremacist, perhaps even ethnonational-restorationist narrative may permit a far deeper and more effective militarization of society: conscription, mandatory sacrifice, demographic discipline, domestic repression, and the reclamation of armed violence, all understood as positive national virtues. The Systemic Function of the Pariah I am not predicting that any specific party or faction in this or that country will soon govern, nor am I claiming that elites consciously engineered these parties or factions from scratch to militarize the imperial core. Rather, I am analyzing their objective systemic role: what ideological function do these ethnonationalist forces (often excluded as pariahs) perform during the transition from a unipolar, neoliberal period toward rearmament and a more coercive, unbraked capitalism? It is their pariah status that enables them to break institutional taboos and map an ethnonational horizon, while mainstream parties selectively absorb their categories and policies without formally inviting them into government. There may therefore be a tendency not to see ethnonationalist parties, or factions within parties in the imperial core, relationally. By this I mean that they can function as ideological pressure points and an accelerator within a wider reorganization of capital accumulation, state power, historical memory, and geopolitical projection. They are symptoms and instruments of a broader structural moment. Alternative Management Proposals for the Bunker State Different actors can occupy different positions within this emerging field of remilitarization, conditional citizenship, and manufactured threat (external and internal): - Some defend Atlanticist integration; others seek an accommodation with Russia or China to secure industrial inputs. - Some prioritize market deregulation; others champion welfare chauvinism. - Some operate through established ministries and technocratic bodies; others through the party's radical flanks. Their rivalry, disagreement and tactical conflicts are real. But the mainstream Atlanticist centre and more ethnonationalist factions remain competing currents within the same structural transformation. The Integrationist Bourgeoisie in the imperial core seeks to run the Bunker State through the existing multilateral architecture—using NATO 3.0, the EU technocracy, and the fading fumes of "defending democracy" to discipline populations into accepting austerity and rearmament. The Ethnonationalist Sub-imperialists seek to run the same Bunker State by stripping away multilateral pretenses, unleashing raw revanchism, and violently disciplining the domestic sphere through border miitarization, remigration (in the crudest sense), and possibly anti-left repression (in whatever form such a left might take here and there). They fight viciously over political office, legitimacy, and rhetoric. But their mutual hostility or even hatred does not negate the total ideology of the epoch: the structural drive of the state to rearm, enforce class discipline, and transition into a warfare economy under unbraked capitalism. In other words, the ethnonationalist currents and the mainstream establishment within politics today are not polar opposites; they are alternative management proposals submitted to capital for how best to navigate this era of armed trade. (With all its contradictions, and there are many depending on the region or country.) Whether managed through bureaucratic coercion or revanchist mobilization, the structural output—the rearmed, repressive Bunker State—remains the historical trajectory. Specialists of Violence Finally, while these represent different administrative flavors of the same structural moment, this shift translates directly to the material base. I would argue that, regardless of those differences, the hailing of ethnonationalist and supremacist frameworks by the structures of the Bunker State shifts the Overton window. It also opens up what becomes acceptable in everyday life. What do I mean by that? A remilitarized Bunker State in a phase of unbraked capitalism—a phase of armed trade—creates demand for specialists of violence. As a result, the most militant elements of such movements therefore emerge more visibly in everyday life, stepping into the public sphere: recruiting, harassing and more. They are surfacing precisely because they are the prospective foot soldiers, enforcers and mercenaries of the era.