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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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I’m not sure if the premise is reasonable enough to even consider. The richest man in the world just spammed Twitter with stats about the Rotherham gangs, and weeks later threw a “Roman salute” at the inauguration. DEI is being dismantled. Major social media posts that mention Israel are inundated with Israel-critical commentary. January 6th protesters were unilaterally pardoned. Deportations are occurring. Fertility concerns are mainstream. How can I take —

the degradation of the online right

seriously as a premise? They’ve never been less degraded. “Moneyed interests” have been phenomenal for the “online right”. And it’s never been easier to get your thoughts disseminated, you can just post on substack and gain a following. Factions are also just how reality works, nothing wierd about that.

My own fear regarding the right is that the Zoomers are not sufficiently radicalized. They are the brainzlop generation raised on even more addicting media and games, having rap shoved down their throat like never before. They are true nihilists, not going down rabbit holes online. They haven’t received the sacred texts the infographics and documentaries. But I really have no idea if this intuition is correct, because I’m not in their social ecosystems, which afaik are fractured discord spaces rather than an image board or something. Maybe they’re doing fine actually.

The zoomers in the US are less than half white. Israel posts on social media have been responded to with hardcore anti-Israel replies for 20+ years, the only thing that slightly varies is who is criticizing who. Musk’s salute was a weird autistic thing and Bibi came out swinging by saying he’s a huge friend of Israel, as did the ADL. There’s no plan to deport more than a few hundred thousand illegal criminals and do more border pushback, NOBODY has a serious plan to build the infrastructure to deport 13+ million illegal migrants including those in the US for 10/20/30/40 years. The Rotherham posting did nothing because Labour has a large, unassailable majority in the British parliament until 2029. Fertility concerns are mainstream in every developed countries from Norway to Korea to Canada, but given that even highly aggressive plans like Hungary’s have been only very very modestly successful and they’re still well below replacement it seems unlikely anything’s going to happen in the US soon (especially because any viable plan will likely be very costly). So again, dr x types don’t seem to be winning much yet.

it seems unlikely anything’s going to happen in the US soon (especially because any viable plan will likely be very costly)

It would also benefit icky people.