The Bernie Bro Question, Part 2:
Rebels Without a Candidate

3,360 words

Some in the Dissident Right have pined for and predicted a mass defection from the materialist Left to the Dissident Right.

Of course, people have been talking about a theoretical Bernie Bro-to-Dissident Right pipeline since at least 2016, if not earlier. This has so far not materialized in substantial numbers that I am aware of. But with Bernie Sanders leaving the scene, Democratic Socialism is about to become like Wings without Paul McCartney. Unwoke anti-liberal anti-establishment socialists now find themselves without a rallying point. So perhaps it’s time to revisit this prospect.

I have previously expressed skepticism [2] about a possible Bernie Bro-to-Dissident Right pipeline, as has Counter-Currents’ Robert Hampton in his article “The Fantasy Red-Brown Alliance [3].” While there is a lot of overlap between the Dissident Right and the materialist Left, race is not one of the things we overlap on, and that’s a pretty large goddamn pill. We have more overlap with civic nationalists than we do with the materialist Left, and we have all seen how stubborn civnats can be on subjects of race. We might have 80% agreement, but that other 20% is huge.

You also have to consider how much money is in the Dirtbag Left, and the fact that getting involved in white nationalism is commercial suicide. Ashley St. Clair’s political career was ended simply for being in the same picture as someone accused of being a White Nationalist. So if we’re talking about the main players of the Dirtbag Left, the guys making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year being Democratic Socialists are going to continue being Democratic Socialists until the audience and money dry up. And if the audience did dry up and they did decide to go right-wing, most would not go further than edgy Tucker Carlson. Anything beyond Tucker and they are putting their Patreons at risk.

But what of their audience? Or maybe of the lesser-known names. There are surely some honest truth-seekers and people who are in it to make a difference. No doubt some will come to the conclusion that the Right is a better vehicle for enacting badly-needed structural change. But I am skeptical.

With all that said, I will now argue against my position, because there are a few stray white pills to be found when you are looking at this issue. As Oscar Wilde once said: “The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.”

One thing you notice about the Dirtbag Left is that they use a ton of Right-wing slang. It’s common to see unwoke Lefties talk about politicians “cucking” on issues and/or being “blackpilled” after setbacks and other slang and memes that originated from White Nationalist message boards. So the two online communities aren’t exactly living in vacuums sealed off from each other. There is some cultural cross-pollination going on. In the early days of The Great Alt-Right Skeptic War of 2017–18, Morgoth made a similar observation [4] about the YouTube Skeptic community:

The Sceptics are also aware that they simply cannot compete with the Alt-Right as a counter-cultural force, testament to this is that their own subscribers and followers on social media are festooned with memes and tropes emanating from the Alt-Right. What makes this interesting is that the combined reach of the Sceptic community in social media terms is probably far higher than that of the Alt-Right. However, the metapolitical potency of the Alt-Right means that it warps everything surrounding it; like a black hole, its gravity pulls on any other objects within its reach. Indeed, racial thinking is itself like gravity and it has only been with supreme effort that the elites have managed to suppress it for so long.

While I may be skeptical of a Bernie Bro-to-Alt-Right pipeline, there is one group of people who are not skeptical: Antifa.

Antifa are absolutely paranoid that a pipeline is going to open up any day now and that Dirtbag Lefties are going to start converting to fascism en masse. “Paranoid” is an understatement. They are absolutely convinced that this is going to happen. Antifa Twitter is best known for doxing and harassing Right-wingers, but a lot of them spend nearly as much time policing the language of the Dirtbag Left. Indeed, some Antifa actually spend MORE time doing this.

Their objection to the Dirtbag Left is that because they use edgy humor laced with ironic sexism, racism, and anti-Semitism, they are desensitizing their listeners, which over time will result in either a) mass conversions of Dirtbag Leftists to White Nationalism, b) the Dirtbag Left eventually being co-opted and taken over by Nazi entryists, or c) White Nationalists becoming redpilled on the evils of capitalism and incorporating socialist ideas into their ideology, thus making them more formidable ideological competitors.

And this brings us to an important point. The reason why socialists cannot defeat nationalists, in the long run, is that it would be far easier for nationalists to steal socialists’ most popular ideas than vice versa. Nationalists could come out in favor of UBI, student loan forgiveness, or even Medicare For All without much trouble. There would be some spirited internal debate about it, but I doubt anyone would walk out of the movement over it. Free-market purists already hate us.

Socialists, however, would have a much harder time stealing our most popular ideas (immigration restriction, mass deportations, a wall). Those things are much more heretical to their worldview. If Chapo Trap House came out one day said “You know what? I think we should build a wall and deport them all,” that would trigger a socialist optics war that would make the Great Optics War of 2018 look like High School Musical 3. A lot of socialists would rather lose than go racist. We will always be able to politically outflank them.

Antifa secretly know this. So according to Antifa types, if you are going to do communism or socialism, you HAVE to fill your content with a bunch of SJW bullshit to make it completely unpalatable to White Nationalists. That is non-negotiable. If you don’t inject your commie talking points with a bunch of anti-white and feminist flapdoodle, white nationalists will consume it and then either take over your movement or steal your ideas.

Before I continue, I should give a quick disclaimer. Yes, I am aware that Antifa are a bunch of unhinged weirdos that think literally everyone is a Nazi. I am aware that what they consider “Nazi” or “fascist” is a lot different than what we would consider “Nazi” or “fascist.” These guys probably think that Charlie Kirk and Bill Mitchell are Nazis.

So just because Antifa says the Dirtbag Left is cryptofascist doesn’t necessarily mean they actually are. While the fact that Antifa see so many parallels between the Dirtbag Left and the Dissident Right is interesting and noteworthy, it should also be taken with a hefty pinch of salt.

End disclaimer.

In a Splice Today article entitled “The Reactionary Grift of the Dirtbag Left [7],” Jewish writer Noah Berlatsky elaborates on the problematic nature of the Dirtbag Left and “class-first Leftism”:

What that means, for her and for the dirtbag left in general, is that class oppression is the only real oppression, and anyone who’s concerned about transphobia, misogyny, or racism, is a bad faith person trying to undermine the socialist cause. . .

. . . Class-first leftism is a simplistic and reductive ideology. Like it says on the tin, it reduces everything to a single issue. But the simplicity is part of why the dirtbags find it appealing. If you turn everything into a nail, the only tool you need is a hammer. When you have the one true answer to everything, you have to spend a lot less time preparing for that podcast.

Moreover, class-first leftism allows the dirtbags to imitate reactionary right-wing media’s essential grift: posing as champions of the downtrodden while kicking the marginalized. Attacking women, the disabled, or antiracists, is presented as heroic socialism, since all those people are trying to distract us from the only real nexus of oppression.

Screeching harpy and self-described “professional social justice warrior” Gwen Snyder.

One prominent Dirtbag Left critic in the Antifa Twitter scene is Gwen Snyder [8], an intersectional labor activist from Philadelphia. In her Twitter profile, she describes herself as an “organizer and consultant combating white supremacy.” She is obsessed (and I mean obsessed) with the idea that the class reductionism of the Dirtbag Left is acting as a gateway to “white supremacy.”

On March 2, the day before Super Tuesday, Snyder went on a 119 tweet tirade [9] (Adderall is a hell of a drug) against Chapo Trap House and the Dirtbag Left laced with seething anti-whiteness. Speaking of her experiences in the Occupy Wall Street movement, Snyder says…

She forgot Erik Stryker who was also an Occupier.

If you are interested in the Dirtbag Left response to this thread, YouTuber Vaush made a video about it [10].

On March 25, Gwen went on another tweet tirade [11] (Mrs. Snyder goes on a lot of tirades), this time about Dirtbaggers’ use of the word “parasitic” to describe landlords. You know. Because White Nationalists describe Jews as “parasitic” and a lot of landlords are Jews. “It’s too close to home, and too near the bone” as Morrissey would say [12].

Selectively screenshotting hot brocialist takes for White Nationalist propaganda purposes? Who would do such a thing? The irony is that I am now selectively screenshotting her tweets for White Nationalist propaganda purposes.

But I mean, c’mon, Gwen. Where’s the lie?

Back to Gwen.

For those who don’t know, r/stupIDPol is [13] a 30K member Reddit community started by Dirtbaggers who felt the Chapo Trap House subreddit was becoming too woke and liberal. I’ll be saying more about Red Scare later.

Again, where’s the lie?

Just last week, she went on another tirade [14] (last one from this lady, promise!), this time because the Oriental guy [15] from Chapo Trap House once booked Sam Hyde on a comedy show 7 years ago [16] where Mr. Hyde started wilding out.

I must say, this woman has a way of making Chapo Trap House sound a lot more awesome than they actually are. Like, if I didn’t know what Chapo Trap House was and I just randomly stumbled upon Gwen Snyder’s page, I’d be like “Man, these Chapo guys sound pretty cool. How come I’ve never heard of them before? They’re fascists, they like Sam Hyde, they’re down with pogroms. I really need to check these Chapo dudes out sometime. They sound like my kind of guys.”

While Chapo Trap House may be the most prominent and influential outlet in the Dirtbag Left scene, they are not the most “problematic” among Antifa types by a long stretch. Two names that you see pop up a lot in these anti-Dirtbag Left Antifa diatribes are Aimee Terese, the Australian host of the What’s Left [17] podcast, and Anna Khachiyan [18], a Jewish-Armenian immigrant and host of the Red Scare podcast. One might say these two are the most “based” of the Dirtbag Left crowd.

Before we continue, we should clarify what it means to be “based” by Dirtbag Left standards. Both of these ladies are hardcore race deniers (especially Aimee Terese) and fanatically anti-identity politics (or idpol as the Lefty kids call it). This is including (although perhaps not especially) white identitarianism. So while they may seem irredeemably fascist from an Antifa perspective, from our perspective (i.e., the correct perspective) and in the grand scheme of things in general, they would be significantly less “based” than, say, Stefan Molyneux or even Milo Yiannopoulos, who recently gave his tepid endorsement of human biodiversity.

These ladies seem more based than they actually are because they are nominally on the Left. They’re only “based” if we’re grading on the curve. It’s like hearing a 7-year-old say the word “fuck.” It’s nothing you haven’t heard a million times before, but it raises an eyebrow when coming from that particular speaker.

With that out of the way, let’s look at what all the fuss is about.

Robert Hampton said in his article that “the ‘Red-Brown’ alliance is a figment of marginalized Right-wingers’ imaginations. No one on the Left wants this alliance.” This is mostly but not entirely true. Most notably, Slavoj Zizek, a much-discussed figure Lefty circles, called for exactly such an alliance in a 2017 article for The Independent entitled “Alt-Right Trump supporters and Bernie Sanders fans should join together to defeat capitalism [19].”

To cut a long story short, there is no victory of the left without the broad alliance of all anti-establishment forces. One should never forget that our true enemy is the global capitalist establishment and not the new populist right which is merely a reaction to its impasses.

But among Dirtbag Left circles, the person most infamous for calling for an alliance with the Far Right is Aimee Terese of the podcast What’s Left. She posted this tweet back in December, and Antifa has been hyperventilating about it ever since.

Now, she says “red and bronze” instead of “red and brown.” This is a reference to Bronze Age Pervert, a neoreactionary writer and social media personality who stepped up to fill in the void left by Mencius Moldbug’s retirement from commentary to become the king of NRx. [1] [20] Moldbug himself has been championing [21] BAP’s book debut Bronze Age Mindset.

This was not the first time that Terese has been accused of ideological heresy by the Antifa set. A few months prior to that, she was called out for being chummy on Twitter with unapologetic Nazbol Eric Striker.

Now let’s move on to Red Scare.

The Red Scare podcast, hosted by Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova, is something of an outlier in Dirtbag Left circles in that it is far more focused on cultural critique than material analysis. Anna Khachiyan, the more notorious of the two, is highly influenced by Camille Paglia, and like Paglia, often arrives at conservative conclusions from a Left-wing starting point. This has led to predictable accusations of cryptofascism from the usual suspects.

Granted, a lot of the things she says sound like Alt-Right talking points from 5 years ago.

She’s also drawn comparisons to Mencius Moldbug.

She recently announced to the world that she was reading Bronze Age Mindset.

By now, everyone has heard about Red Scare shocking the world by having Steve Bannon on their podcast [22]. But what is less remarked upon, yet perhaps even more audacious, is that a few days before that, Khachiyan appeared on Tech Wars [23], an NRx Irony Bro podcast hosted by Moldbugist Twitter personality @KANTBOT20K [24]. Kantbot has also had Amy Terese and Sean McCarthy [25] of the Dirtbag Left podcast Grubstakers [26] on his podcasts.

So while there are reasons to be skeptical that a red-brown alliance is possible (or even desirable), it is noteworthy that the NRx crowd (of all people) has actually succeeded in making some inroads into the unwoke Left scene. Say what you will about NRx, but they are ideological cousins of ours. Both of our movements emerged out of the primordial ooze of the Dark Enlightenment.

Remember this?

Obviously, optics is a relevant factor here. We’re seen as evil, whereas NRx (to the extent that anyone knows they exist) are merely seen as eccentric.

A little ways up, I mentioned Sean McCarthy, who is another popular hate figure among Antifa types for several reasons.

First, he is against the doxing and firing of “Nazis.”

In addition to believing that this practice undermines working-class solidarity, McCarthy finds the concept of weaponizing the managerial class (the enemy) against workers (the good guys) is morally repugnant. That Right-wing equivalent would be using the liberal media to attack fellow Right-wingers.

Then there’s this.

Remember how I said earlier that it would be easier for nationalists to steals socialists’ ideas than vice versa? I mean, forget about nationalist ideas. Simply not hating your nation or the very concept of nations is considered a controversial opinion in socialist circles.

IMO, McCarthy is more “based” than Khachiyan or Terese. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a leftist through and through, but he’s a lot more on the ball about where the materialist Left is going wrong than most of that scene. He understands that open borders fetishism and virulent anti-Americanism are toxic and counter-productive to their Leftist ends.

Now, if I were to advise the socialist Left, that would pretty much be the same advice I would give them.

But at the same time, it’s like OK, promoting open borders and anti-Americanism are vote losers. But which voters are you losing? White voters. Blacks and Hispanics don’t care about that stuff. It’s white voters who feel threatened by that stuff, and Sean is smart enough to realize they are an essential constituent, and it’s a good idea not to threaten their ethnic interests. Well, if you’re willing to go that far, why not take the next step further and actively appeal to their ethnic interests? I mean, if they are that essential, why not go that one step further beyond merely not threatening them?

In closing. . .

Nick Fuentes said something about the Dissident Right and the Dirtbag Left on one of his streams lately that was a good observation. I’m not going to sift through 100 hours of footage to find the exact passage so I’m going to be quoting from memory:

A lot of people in the Dissident Right will overlook large amounts of overlap we have with conservatives but get really excited over some tiny bit of overlap that we have with the Left. They’ll be like ‘one of the guys from Chapo Trap House said something based about immigration’ or ‘Cum Town said something racist! They’re our guys’ or ‘Bernie Sanders said something based about immigration 10 years ago’ while ignoring huge amounts of disagreement that we have with those people.

That’s not the exact quote, but it was something like that. This is a good point and because I have been doing such a thing in this article, I thought I should bring it up. Optimism should be tempered with caution when treading these waters. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug, and it can be easy to get carried away. But with this article, I’m doing white pills, so I will offer this up as a counter-point. People usually do not switch ideologies overnight. Usually what happens is that people will initially try to graft elements of their new ideology onto their old ideology.

For example, many — if not most — white nationalists are former libertarians, but the switch wasn’t immediate. They would first go from libertarian to “libertarian but with closed borders [27].” Then after thinking things through a bit more, they might move on to “libertarian but with closed borders and protectionist trade policy.” Then after a while, become “libertarianism but with closed borders, a protectionist trade policy, and some authoritarian elements (just a pinch, just enough to keep things from getting out of hand) but otherwise perfectly libertarian.” And this would go on and on in a “What have the Romans ever done for us?” [28] fashion until they finally say “Screw it. I’m not a libertarian anymore.”

Someone saying something based might just be a one-off. Like Stefan Molyneux showing some anti-Semitic leg before retreating back into cuckiness. But when people do ideologically “lose their religion,” it will start as a slow drip.

So yeah. Maybe it’s something. Or maybe it’s nothing. Proceed with caution.

P.S.

I would also like to end this article by giving a special thanks to Gwen Snyder and (((Antifash Gordon))). I would never have been able to create this piece of fascist propaganda without your inspiration. I hope to convert as many people as possible to white supremacy and hate with this article and when that happens, I will owe it all to you two.

Merci beaucoup d’etat,
— Trav

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Notes

[1] [30] Yes, I realize Moldbug’s back [31] now but he’s not really NRx anymore. He’s… I dunno what you would call it.