How Infiltrated Is Conservative Inc.?

1,822 words

I try to avoid the subject of the upcoming election because honestly, I see validity in both the pro- and anti- Trump arguments. I’m not sure there would be much difference between Trump and Kamala in how they govern. Yes, Kamala is promising to grant amnesty to millions of people. That doesn’t mean she will actually do it. Amnesty has long been a carrot that the Democrats have dangled but never seem to give when they have the chance. I don’t know if they can’t get it done or if they just like having the issue left unresolved so that they can keep the carrot. They might make a serious attempt at amnesty or they might not.

I personally cannot bring myself to shill for Trump. Part of this is personal pride. He’s done nothing to earn my vote. Another part is for my own mental and emotional well-being. You can only break my heart so many times before I’m not going to give you another chance to hurt me. I’m done getting my hopes up. That said, I see the merits of a second Trump term, but I don’t expect him to follow through on his more desirable promises. His less desirable ones, like stamping out antisemitism, sure, but I will believe the deportations when I see them.

For me, it’s a question of whether Trump or Kamala would be better for “the movement.” Which would create a better environment for our ideas to thrive in? Some might say that the Dissident Right is at its best when it is on the offense, so Kamala would be better. However, there seems to be something going on in the backrooms of the GOP. While the vast majority of Republican politicians are bought-and-paid-for shills for Israel, a lot of them are increasingly surrounded by people with our views. It’s been said that every Republican intern has a groyper Twitter account, or is a BAPist or some other flavor of non-traditional rightist.

Last year, it came out that Mike Benz, a conservative censorship expert and friend of Charlie Kirk and Elon Musk, used to be the Alt Right livestreamer Frame Game Radio. I remember when that guy used to do stream with Luke Ford and JF Gariepy. Now he has the ear of some of the most influential people in America.

People have been wondering why old Alt Right talking points have suddenly been coming out of the mouths of people we normally thought of as Con Inc shills. Some of it is that we finally have a free-ish speech platform, so there’s less fear of getting banned. But what if part of it is a delayed reaction of the Alt Right’s impact finally being felt institutionally? If you think about it, someone who was a 22-year-old intern in 2016 when the Alt Right was at its peak would be turning 30 this year. He will have moved up the ladder and made connections. In other words, someone who was 22 at the Alt Right’s peak would just now be getting into positions of influence and have the ear of important people.

You can buy Greg Johnson’s The White Nationalist Manifesto here

Mike Benz and Richard Hanania are just the guys who got caught. How many others are out there? Benz and Hanania got caught because they were content creators. If all someone did was consume content, never went to a meet-up, and lurked the message boards but never posted, he will never be caught. At its peak, the top Alt Right outlets were getting hundreds of thousands of views per week. I have a hard time believing that only two people who were around in those days managed to infiltrate Con Inc and that both of them got caught.

When an archetypical shill like Charlie Kirk starts talking about white identity or Candace Owens starts talking about Jews or Tucker starts promoting WWII revisionism, you will hear people say, “Oh, I bet they’ve been listening to so-and-so’s show.” And who knows? Maybe they have. But much of it is due to their producers, writers, assistants, and advisors being increasingly red-pilled. It has just taken this long for the people who were red-pilled in 2016 to get to a position where they can influence things. And this will continue. In a couple years, the Internet Bloodsports dividends will start kicking in when the people who were 22 when Spencer vs Sargon happened turn 30. Then the year after that, the people who were 22 when the Groyper Wars happened will turn 30.

Some say Con Inc’s adoption of Dissident Right talking points is insincere election year banter. It may very well be. It’s a positive sign that white nationalists are now a big enough and/or influential enough demographic in the right-wing ecosphere that they now must pay some lip service to us like they do with pro-lifers and 2nd Amendment enthusiasts. But even doing it as an insincere op requires them to have someone on staff who is fluent enough in our talking points and knows how to sell them.

Another eyebrow-raising event happened earlier this week when Patrick Casey had an article published in The Blaze. Yes, that Patrick Casey. The Identity Europa guy. Yes, that The Blaze. The Glenn Beck outlet. Now, there are a lot of people giving Patrick Casey a hard time lately claiming that he’s been pulling his punches on the JQ ever since he started getting a degree of mainstream respectability. I think Casey’s mainstream success is a milestone to be celebrated because it shows that White Nationalism is no longer the social death sentence it used to be. Unlike Mike Benz and Richard Hanania, who made Alt Right content pseudonymously and then were outed only after having established themselves within Con Inc, The Blaze was well aware of Patrick Casey’s White Nationalist past when they published him.

If you want to be a purist, you can argue that Patrick Casey is a sell out, and while he recovered from Charlottesville and climbed back into polite society, he did so at the cost of his immortal soul. Or it could be that Casey is an incrementalist. I can respect someone who wants to make a pragmatic calculation that by being X% less pure, they can reach a Y% larger audience. In a cost-benefit analysis, the compromise is still a strategic net gain for the cause.

Cynics might argue that rather than white nationalists infiltrating Con Inc, what is actually happening is that Con Inc is co-opting the white nationalist movement which they intend to deradicalize and integrate into the party apparatus.  You can argue which is which but I can tell you that I read a lot of Antifa Twitter and I can tell you that stuff like this really freaks them out.

Say what you will about The Blaze, but it is “respectable.” Normies watch The Blaze. To Antifa, a guy with “White Nationalist” on his permanent record being allowed a platform on one of the more “respectable” Con Inc outlets is extremely concerning because it normalizes White Nationalism. Purists might argue that if Casey had to stop being a TRVE white nationalist to go mainstream, then what is he actually normalizing. Antifa does not see it this way and would say that’s not even the point. The point is a “No Nazis” glass ceiling has been smashed. Now it’s a question of “How Nazi?” For now, it’s just “former Nazis,” but then it will be current ones. It also gives permission to every conservative outlet less prestigious than The Blaze to go ahead and let “Nazis” on.

Basically, Antifa does not believe that white nationalism can be co-opted. They believe that if you allow fascism to take root anywhere it will spread like a virus and take over if left unchecked. Antifa’s concern is that once you let the Nazi into the club, they will start trying to red-pill the other members. Maybe they will start bringing in their fascist friends.. It was, after all, a conservative government that appointed Hitler chancellor believing that they could control him. They thought they could “co-opt” the Nazis only for the Nazis to take over the entire government.

Now, a lot of Antifa fears strike me as paranoid, and there are incentives for them to exaggerate the danger, but I think they are onto something here. Even if he had to water down the message to do it, a guy who marched at Charlottesville and led one of the most famous White Nationalist organizations in America being granted the respectability of Glenn Beck’s brand is a win for White Nationalism, even if a lot of White Nationalists don’t see it that way. I think we’ve become spoiled in the Elon era. This would have been a big deal had it happened three years ago.

The best reason I can think of to support Trump is that if there has been some degree of Dissident Right infiltration into the Con Inc establishment, and there appears to have been some (more in the media apparatus than the party apparatus), then yes, a Republican victory would be beneficial for the cause. Whatever converts we have inside would come out of the next four years with more experience and connections with a GOP victory.

The problem is that we don’t know how extensive the infiltration is. According to Antifa journalist Amanda Moore, white nationalist infiltration of the GOP is pretty much common knowledge among political insiders and is so widespread that media outlets no longer consider it newsworthy.

It is possible that Ms. Moore is exaggerating to make anti-fascists look like plucky underdogs, but who knows?

I’m not saying we should all jump on the GOP bandwagon, but I’m curious to see where this trend goes. We might have to start thinking about the GOP the way we think about the military. The US military is a mercenary force for global capitalism and the Zionist lobby, and in principle, there is no moral case for why a white person should join it. And yet, there are some who might argue that White Nationalists could join the military and gain skills and experience that they could then contribute towards the cause when they get out. Similarly, although the GOP is irredeemably evil in its present state, it might be worth getting into for the experience. Spend a few years filling the rolodex and learning the game so that when a pro-white politician comes along and gets elected, they will have competent and ideologically reliable staff available. Or use that knowledge and those connections to start your own pro-white organization.

The GOP may never be a truly White Nationalist party, but if they are tolerating the presence of White Nationalists (and ever so slowly, this appears to be the case), it may be of some use to us after all.