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Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, Hanania was right again *
Two months ago, Richard Hanania predicted that Nick Fuentes and the groypers would become a major force in mainstream Republican politics. At the time, there was a fair bit of TheMotte discussion (including by me) which could be described as dismissive. Some choice quotes:
Yeah, about that... A few days ago Nick Fuentes did a full interview with Tucker Carlson. This was a mild surprise at most, given that Tucker has been dabbling in less-than-sympathetic viewpoints on Israel and Jews as of late. A lot of people thought that this would be the nail in the coffin cementing Tucker as a fringe figure, and that his days headlining major conservative events would end.
This appears not to have happened:
The Heritage Foundation is the Conservative Establishment think tank. It doesn't get more mainstream than them. What is striking is that the statement doesn't just contrast America with Israel, it contrasts Christians with Israel, a tacit acknowlegement of the legitimacy of Christian discomfort with Israel specifically because of their rejection of Christ. This isn't quite total groyper victory, but one can see it on the horizon.
From a realpolitik perspective, I think this is bad. The groypers are right that Israel doesn't act in America's interests and that many American Jews have dual loyalty. That's how coalitions work. A few billion dollars in aid and geopolitical cover is a small price to pay for having the ethnic group that controls international finance and global media on your side. Rooting-out infidels might be a good strategy if Christ is King, but if he isn't, and it turns out we're all alone on this big round rock, then the groypers are blowing-up the conservative intelligentsia for no good reason.
*Apparently this is a series now.
I saw that interview as well and was indeed surprised that Tucker had him on. He didn’t really cover anything that Nick hadn’t already brought up in previous interviews. I did get the impression that Tucker was squirming a bit in some of his responses to Nick, almost as if he’s trying to ride both sides of the aisle because he doesn’t want to get hit hard by the political establishment.
I felt I also got dismissed by people here when I brought up Nick in contrast with Charlie Kirk’s assassination. People essentially said Nick doesn’t have much of a base of support outside the groypers, but there’s a massive undercurrent of people sympathetic for wanting to shift the establishment gatekeeping of conservative assumptions to other issues, that’s probably best seen by the viewership numbers his content generates. I don’t have anything quantifiable outside of that. And why should someone? People don’t want to get destroyed in their personal or professional lives if they express sympathies for his views.
I don’t actually think Nick is a racist or an anti-Semite. He’s not someone like ZoomerHistorian (who probably is a racist and anti-Semite) but the kind of views expressed in a book like the one in the video represent a broad segment of populations across the western world who are afraid of saying the kinds of things that someone like Nick is willing to do. And if you look at the character assassination campaign against him, it’s no wonder why.
In the future I predict no one will remember the significant impact someone like Charlie Kirk had over the long run. He simply repeated the same boring, middle of the road mainstream conservatism these token characters with big money support behind them always do. But people will remember the impact Nick had in the political sphere. Whether that turns out to be for better or worse is still to be determined.
Why? We remember both MLK and Malcolm X, so I guess we simply have to wait until someone takes a shot at Fuentes to see just how much history rhymes.
Perhaps Fuentes is the seed crystal for what will be, in 50 years, clearly identifiable as post-progressivism. Or post-post-conservatism, but that's silly.
Well someone already did show up at his house with a gun, wanting to kill him. But I suppose he’s an appropriate target to the relevant interest groups, so he doesn’t matter that much.
50 years could contain anything. You can’t even predict what will happen tomorrow. But conservatism is still looked at as a tarnish word the left remains hard at work trying to smear and degrade even further as much as it can. It contaminates virtually everything it touches, including the root of its own traditional philosophy. The liberalism that arose out of the European wars of religion came out of necessity to combat constantly warring identitarian groups with competing divisive and exclusionary outlooks, remains a sound and respectable philosophical opponent of my own political beliefs. It’s still one I regard as wrong but useful lessons can still be gleaned from its failings. The left abandoned its own stance on liberalism a long time ago. If we’re not post-everything already, let’s at least return to the historical and normal vocabulary used to describe our respective positions. Common sense would be a great place to start with things.
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