Consequences of Being Listened To
Finding an answer to "Now What?"
I am usually inspired to write primarily from three areas, the first being that of what I see on my drives across rural North Texas, the second being my life experiences from Church to Friendships, and the third being what I read both online and offline.
Today I came across this thread from Pedro L. Gonzalez of Claremont and Chronicles fame. It was an interesting thread to say the least, given Pedro’s position within the American right’s establishment that isn’t neoconservative. I don’t wish to say establishment in a negative context, just that he works within closer machinations of influence and power than I do, after all I merely exist as an amphibious geopolitical commentator on the internet, a man from flyover country who knows that he will not have a seat at the table of power. However, I wanted to take a look at this thread and see if we could get some takeaways that would lead us, the broader right wing in the United States, in a direction that would lead to actual victories not just pressure release valves offering a temporary high.
We must begin with the initial claim,
Seems like the dissident right is imploding or drifting because it much of what it has been saying has been integrated into the mainstream right.
Not knowing who Pedro pays specific attention to, outside of where he makes his guest appearances or who he retweets, I operate in the dark on this claim. For starters, the “dissident” space (which I agree with Pedro’s point about labels) has a wide mix of individuals, ranging from Ethno-Nationalists, Christian and Perennial Traditionalists, whatever is left of the Neo-Reactionaries, Third Positionists, and countless other niche groups that can agree on a few things but not much else. The Nationalist and Ethno-Nationalist spaces over the last few years have seen in-fighting with regards to things like covid, the WEF, and more, but I may be speaking from a much smaller sample size given how social media platforms and personalities can often suck much of the discursive oxygen from a topic. I perhaps don’t see the “implosion” on the part that I may not be able to view it from his more institutional lens, as everyone from Tucker Carlson’s writers and producers to Claremont Fellows follow many of us and who we interact with.
Mr. Gonzalez (I say Mr. out of respect, not condescension) acknowledges the fact that many on the Dissident Right—perhaps a nicer word since Gottfried’s original “Alternative Right” has been turned into a boogeyman and relatively dead grouping/label—have seen much absorption into the mainstream. Whether it’s The Great Replacement, Anarcho-Tyranny, the issues with our current economic system, and the managerial state, they’ve gone pretty mainstream and are being floated to individuals who are not right wing to some degree of success. Yes, people are listening, and Mr. Gonzalez is looking to see where the seen might “evolve” from here on out. A very good question as there is an unfathomable amount of work to be done even from this point on. I do have to chuckle about the issue of infighting from what I mentioned earlier, as he notes;
I'm not sure what happens next, but there will probably be territorial fights over who the "real dissidents" are.
as if that doesn’t happen all the time on twitter, telegram, or youtube regularly. While I’m certainly no fan of the term “dissident right” despite being called that, Pedro has a point on the issue of where we go from here (at least in an American sense of the question).
He’s right to call out the issue of “Notice and Move On” which many have criticized him, other fellows like Auron MacIntyre, and even myself to some degree of engaging in. We do an awful lot of that, pointing things out and moving on to the next thing to point out. Although for many of us, again myself included, we are not in a position aside from the local politics to do much but that with regards to a national conversation. I was surprised as hell when I found myself tagged in a tweet by Jeremy Carl, a senior Claremont Fellow, thanking me alongside much more influential people than myself for helping in terms of inspiring his reply to Curtis Yarvin’s “You Can Only Lose the Culture War.”
As this quick bit of right-wing pontification comes to a close, Mr. Gonzalez notes the importance of change. Essentially the question, “well, now what?” Many of our issues are being addressed, so where are we to go? After all, we are going to go into our areas of interest, whether that be culture, religion, race, or foreign policy. He has a valid point about the issue of doing more of what Chris Rufo and others do on getting things banned, but one of the few things out of Yarvin’s brain that is true is the subject of the institution itself and how it can manipulate procedural outcomes to get a desired result. What good is a ban or using power to fight back against bad institutions if the regime can change the definition of a woman, recession, or justice overnight? Mind you that comes with several decades of a long march through the institutions, but that level of power still stands.