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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 have few instincts or thoughts on the broader question of how "prominent" Fuentes is with various political factions. However it's kinda crazy to me that someone who openly supported Kamala Harris is still being considered a Republican or conservative.
He wasn't supporting Harris because he supported wokeness, he supported her because the republicans aren't delivering. The strategy of voting republican no matter how poorly they serve their base only causes the base to get trampled. If the Republicans can count on votes no matter what, there is no reason for the republicans to consider the base's interests.
The republican establishment needs the threat of the base going against them in order to keep the establishment delivering.
Traditionally this is done in primaries, not in general elections.
How many "squad" members have you seen supporting Trump because Kamala/Joe Biden was an unacceptable neoliberal shill collaborating with fascists yadda yadda...? I expect the answer will be "none."
I think that ACX mentioned that some pro-Palestinian Muslims were announcing that they were going to vote for Trump because Harris was too Israel-friendly. I am unsure how they are feeling about Trump's ME policies now.
The obvious choice to fixing situations where some voters can not credibly defect from their party because the other party caters to their interests even less would be to get rid of FPTP and get a multi-party system.
But without that, "always vote for the party which is most closely aligned to you" seems like a bad meta-strategy which will see you voting for the marginally less evil ones. Sometimes it is good not to engage in trades which are only slightly net-positive to incentivize the other player to offer you better trades instead.
FWIW, while I like it in theory, all the european multi-party government system countries have a very similar problem as the one plagueing the US at the moment, with a sizeable chunk of people not feeling represented by any of the existing options and switching to the new (usually right-wing) kid on the block, despite not really liking that either.
And imo they are correct, there has been a coalescence towards a shared worldview that is best described as internationalist left among all major establishment parties. As a european myself, I don't have the impression that the US really has it worse, with the democrats taking the role of the internationalist left establishment vs the republicans as the opposition to that.
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