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Can Conservatism assimilate the Dissident Right?
Recently Matt Walsh, conservative commentator from the Daily Wire, had a monologue on white identity that was basically word-for-word pulled from DR standard fare.
Conservatives have long used the "Democrats are the Real Racists" retort, which is an easy target for the DR to mock and differentiate itself from conservatism with a more radical viewpoint that has a stronger force of truth. Only very recently has "anti-white" migrated from DR to Conservative lexicon in its denunciations of progressivism. But this clip goes much further than both and does seem to indicate a sliding window on acceptable thought around race within the Conservative movement. It starts with rhetoric that you've probably heard from conservatives before, but it moves into territory that you do not see from conservatives, and this is clearly a scripted monologue rather than off-the-cuff comment. The end of the clip explains:
The "Democrats are the Real Racists" (DR3) rhetoric is essentially a complaint of progressive hypocrisy in an effort to discredit progressive concern over racial issues and progressivism's own crypto race-essentialism which Hlynka equates with the DR.
Conservatism has traditionally used progressive hypocrisy on race in order to denounce progressive racial advocacy. The DR uses progressive hypocrisy over race to advocate for white identity. But I think Walsh's monologue here indicates a potential conservative assimilation of the DR position. It could be said that Walsh does not directly endorse white identity, but he describes it in positive terms that are exactly what you would read within the DR. His monologue here is clearly more in the DR ethos of using progressive framing of racial conflict in order to provide rational justification for white identity: "... Because to do the same would be to acknowledge the existence of white people as a group and to give that group permission to care about its own wellbeing" is essentially an endorsement of white identity rather than a typical conservative denunciation of racial identity altogether.
Particularly in the past 15 years, if you were a young conservative or libertarian or something and basically came to the conclusions of Matt Walsh without hearing those words ever be said by anyone in the conservative establishment, where would you gravitate to? The circles where you'll be handed Culture of Critique, circles where Nietzsche is looked to rather than John Locke or Milton Friedman, circles where WW-II and Holocaust Revisionism that would make a conservative faint is conventional wisdom.
It's possible, and potentially a threat to the DR, if Conservative Inc were able to assimilate an overtly pro-white platform into its rhetoric and ideology. One thing that is inseparable from identity, and is the primary reason why white identity has been taboo since the end of the war, is the friend and enemy distinction. If the Daily Wire for example were able to be the outlet for pro-white inclinations in the conservative movement, then it would also have much greater power in framing the friend and the enemy with the traditional shibboleths rather than losing those people to radicalization. Think of Rush Limbaugh, who could constantly lambast the Drive By Media and Hollywood to build credibility in order to ultimately keep everyone on the reservation.
It's not sustainable for the Conservative movement to completely ignore and denounce white identity. They have to acknowledge it eventually if they want to avoid being eclipsed by a more radical movement that offers that bundled with a lot more radical thinking. They do need to figure out how to assimilate white identity and advocacy with conservatism, and if they do that effectively then the DR is going to lose an important monopoly which has driven many to that sphere. Walsh's monologue here is an indication that this is likely going to happen.
I don’t see DR and MR (Mainstream Right, I like the theme here btw) as oppositional. As someone who has been reading DR’s notes for a decade now, DRs have always loved when MRs started listening to their prognoses and advice. When Trump entered the scene, DRs rejoiced that he called attention to problems at the border and made implied comments on white identity. It’s often forgotten that the DR meme machine is what pushed Trump into the MR, implicitly coordinated around /pol/, Reddit, and Twitter. The “Real Enemy” (RNs) knew this, which is why they botswarmed /pol/ and deleted any plausible DR Reddit community while catastrophizing DRs and dis-uniting the Right, to prevent a repeat of the hype train. Whenever a MR comes closer to DR, DRs love it. Whenever MRS (mainstream right spaces) allow for more DR talk, DRs love it.
Part of this is that DRs have next to no real organizational capacity. They are more of an idea generator than a startup hub. (Side note: the fact that this isn’t a fair fight is lost on many DRs, who surprisingly cling to a lost moral code of actually trying to tell the truth. The mainstream does not think “how can I tell the truth about the DR”, neither do they think “what is the worst thing DR has said.” They think from consequent to antecedent, which is what we saw during the Jewish “day of hate hoax”, only utilizing truth when it enhances the potency of the propaganda. 99% of their focus is “what story or spectacle will persuade someone given what I know about the frailty of human psychology”, with the remaining 1% ensuring that they are not lying so obviously that their house of cards crumbles. DR’s are sitting there trying to tell people about the statistically correct FBI stats, correcting people who exaggerated them, and so forth, always being meticulous in data because they are mostly autistic and neurotic and analytical men. They have no skill in propaganda generation, by and large, and don’t even realize that they are supposed to do it.)
I don't think this is a good characterisation of the DR position here. They aren't clinging to a moral code of trying to tell the truth - they perceive telling the truth as one of the weapons that are actually available to them. They can't rely on speaking power to truth as the MR/ML can, and their ideas actually have to stand on their own without the backing of the mainstream. "That person is lying to you for their own personal gain - here's the actual truth they don't want you to know" is a powerful opener for propaganda, especially when the person saying it is actually correct.
Technically true but I want to provide a bit more context. The reason that the DR has next to no real organizational capacity is that any DR organization which forms is immediately infiltrated, crushed and prosecuted by existing power structures. In many countries, forming a DR group is explicitly illegal, and in the vast majority of others it will get you immediately added to governmental watchlists.
This is the exact opposite of reality. The DR is the most effective propaganda outlet in the modern world - their memes and culture have completely colonised the gaming spaces occupied by the youth, their ideas shape popular conversations and their memes are so ubiquitous that they have in many cases become indistinguishable from regular internet culture. They can create ideas like the OK hand signal and milk being white supremacist dogwhistles and have the legacy media take them entirely seriously and broadcast their claims. They created "It's ok to be white", a scheme which caused a lot of nastier people on the left to drop the mask in a way that got a lot of normal people noticing. They don't just know that they're supposed to do it - they obsess over creating memes, "meming" things and repeatedly testing their ideas and messaging amongst themselves for maximum virality, creating entire internet subcultures devoted to spreading their ideas. They played such a large role in the election of Trump that a lot of forces on the left and MR immediately started attacking the major tech companies in order to do everything they could to make that collaboration less successful and less powerful - to say nothing of instances like the prosecution of Douglas Mackey.
Or in other words, they're counting coup- Kiwifarms vs. Keffals and co. is how I'd expect that to look.
If it looks like a liberal and quacks like a liberal it's... probably a liberal. They're disproportionately dissident anyway when in a political situation that doesn't favor them- it's probably an evolutionary strategy to be sufficiently indispensable that the progressive-traditionalists can't fire them. These people just tend to create things because it's, for lack of a better word, in them to create; hacker culture used to be like this and, when you look at what the forefront is (used to be tech in general, but it's more limited to ML now), still very much is.
Once you figure out that traditionalists and progressives are just fighting over the temporary allegiances of these people- remember that, while the left can't meme, neither can the right (without the liberals)- political dynamics make more sense. It's just a pendulum; when dominated by traditionalists, play progressive, when dominated by progressives, play traditionalist.
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