So You Want to Talk to Frogs

To credentialed friends and mutuals

There has been much debate over the question of anonymity as of late, especially on the right, whether in publications like The American Mind or The American Conservative. A string of articles on purges, using your real name, doxxing, and more have cropped up. This has coincided over the course of the last few years of anonymous or semi-anonymous individuals being published in similar publications. Whether it was Michael Anton taking up a pseudonym, or granting Bronze Age Pervert a chance to respond to critics about his book, or even allowing a simple man with an amphibious Klemens von Metternich profile picture to write here today certainly says something.

However, this hasn’t been without friction. 

For example late last year, Mrs. Ashley Colby’s article, published in The American Mind, was met with criticism and concern by many anonymous individuals on the right, who had discovered her political past and had brought it up in what I believe to be a valid critique of one’s bona fides. However I am not here to discuss that event, as I have already done so here. What this does bring up for discussion however, is the growing trend of establishment and credentialed conservatives, coming to the anons of Twitter, Substack, and YouTube, for ideas and discourse.

So, you want to talk to frogs? 

As a semi-anonymous individual (I show my face on camera but my real name and location remains unknown,) perhaps this can serve as an intermediary between the two. I hope for this to serve as a traveler’s guide for numerous producers, professors, writers, and pundits that happen to follow us on Twitter and elsewhere. Because after all, some of today’s tweets are tomorrow’s mainstream subjects of investigation. We recently just saw the best example of this with my more popular mutual and accomplished anon Aristophanes over at Return.life.

First understand that you’re wandering into their territory, it is a social ecosystem rife with its own rules and hierarchies, from esoteric thread posters, reply guys, and even fellows like me who don’t know what they’re doing. They are skeptical of most if not all “facelords” those who use their actual name and face so broaching the ecosphere will of course come with that baggage, and with good reason as it often entails not being allowed to broach the uncomfortable topics of historical revisionism, human biodiversity, and more. Understand that you are not the gatekeeper, although many anons will be happy to see their ideas and threads mentioned in the public discourse but I would suggest that you don’t water it down too much. Hell even if you do, the numbers from threads, podcasts, twitter spaces, and followings means that there are more effective avenues to keep them out in the discursive space. However this doesn’t mean that we won’t be grateful, as some of us do check the emails and names of people who subscribe to us. Yet they will be more likely to gatekeep you, as coordinated environments of group chats, larger accounts, and podcasts all converse with one another to share their experiences with said individuals.

Trying to gatekeep anons is akin to Caligula ordering his men to win a war against the sea. Trying to argue against anonymity will have you labeled in a dozen or so group chats, each all heavily coordinated to socially police and wonder who you work for and whether or not you “glow” in terms of being associated with numerous law enforcement agencies on the federal level. Shocking, I know. Although I will admit, that there are times where even if someone disagrees with them on a particular take, some one is bound to ask “what’s his angle?” in a furious skepticism of his or her intent. I myself am in a similar position that to argue against anonymity in the same way Jordan Peterson does or others like him, I have you on my “not to be trusted list”.

If the recent monologues on Tucker Carlson Tonight feel seemingly straight out twitter investigations and threads from anons, odds are they are. I say this not to be boastful but merely to confirm it, given the fact that individuals like Gregg Re and Stephen Downey follow me and countless others. Even the once anonymous Auron MacIntyre now works for The Blaze. This online space, a loose amalgamation of historians, professionals, artists, reactionaries, esotericists, Christians, pagans, Nietzscheans, and so much more has anything to offer, it’s just about anything you can look up, if you don’t mind the casual racism; much to the dismay of Rod Dreher I’m sure. 

Also recognize that there is animosity, although it’s just as much ambition that comes with this engagement between the two spaces. We’re by all means happy to be heard, retweeted, or published, yet at the same time frustrated by the fact that our voices are not the mainstream compared to credentialed classes of DC or Coastal folk that tend to make up the hefty majority of who are published here. There are many within the anon space that would love to replace you, and I’d imagine that’s where some of the gatekeeping on the end of the well known “facelords” the public individuals showing their faces and names alongside their ideas. Trust me, many of us want your jobs, or at least the influence.

I imagine you’ll gatekeep the best of them, either for concerns with regards to their posting history, what they actually believe, or their lack of education. There are some folks in these anonymous, right wing spaces that have little formal education yet can provide a near eidetic level of research and understanding of complicated subjects. After all, some of the best anons were more on the ball with regards to COVID-19, the 2020 Election, and more. 

The anonymous (Far? Normal?) right wing space however, isn’t likely to go anywhere at all, and for all of its quirks and personalities, it will continue to serves its purpose of driving the overton window rightward to where many would be happy with what’s considered “fringe” or “hard right” to be talked about in normal parlance today. After all, years of harassing mainstream politicians and pundits about The Great Replacement, has been often discussed in the lens of The Celebration Parallax and more on various establishment or mainstream conservative publications. However, I would not speak more on gatekeeping and on the subject of interaction if I were not to bring up a very good point made by an anonymous individual, Astral, who had said that we will still be around because there will always be disappointed by those in the mainstream not willing to discuss or do what is necessary to solve these problems.

Which brings me to the final area of discussion on gatekeeping, on wanting to maintain this anonymous-mainstream interlocution that I find to be one of the most important, which is to respect the anonymity of the communities and groups you find yourself going towards. After all, many throughout history, and more contemporaneously wrote anonymously. From Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite to Publius, or even Michael Anton writing under a different name on the well known Flight 93 Election article, one must understand its necessity. To advocate against anonymity would be harmful not only to us who don’t write under our real faces or names, but it would be harmful to the literary and intellectual renaissance that has been occurring on the anonymous right. It would lead to many online spaces to become further pushed into the intellectual ghetto, easily more policed and contained. Where these ideas, many of which would be beneficial to elite consciousness wouldn’t be found, and the schizophrenic deluge of infighting and intelligence community paranoia would only send a poor frog into a boil slowly and then all at once.

As a brief moment of reflexivity, perhaps it is the fact that I am in over my head. I am not in Return.Life, I am not in The American Mind or anywhere like that (save for our great friends at IM-1776) so who knows, maybe I have been lucky and simply failing upward. However judging the quality of my work and the humble following I have suggests anything but.

So, you want to talk to frogs?

By all means, the water’s fine.

The Croaking is Pretty Loud Though.