The "New Right" vs. Conservatism
A review of Micheal Malice's The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics
The attempt to attain the unattainable is nearly always a corrupting enterprise. If a political movement seeks to implement policies that can’t possibly work, it will achieve little beyond sabotage and destruction. The left, particularly the far left, has become, on balance, a destructive force in our society. Its Gramscian march through the institutions of Western Civilization has enabled it achieve dominance with the education establishment, the universities, Hollywood, the mainstream media, Big Tech, Wall Street and Corporate America. Through its control and/or influence over these institutions, these far left extremists, with the more moderate left providing cover, can effectively push their propaganda on the nation’s youth (i.e., “Critical Race Theory”), can seek to render the citizenry defenseless against criminals (i.e., “defund the police”) and can “cancel” individuals it dislikes (i.e., get them banned from social media and fired from their jobs).
Whenever the left becomes so powerful that it threatens the long-term survival of a civilization, it becomes the responsibility of non-left political factions, often referred to as the “political right,” to hold these irresponsible forces in check and restore order and traditional norms to society. There is much at stake in this sempiternal battle between left and right. If the left becomes too powerful or the right too weak, society can collapse into a radical leftist tyranny (i.e., what used to be called “communism”).
So when the left begins to approach hegemonic dominance in a society, the ability of the “right-wing” to constitute a powerful political counter-force capable of disarming the worst elements of this ideological left becomes paramount. This consideration naturally leads us to wonder about the current state of the political right in contemporary society. Is it a strong and well nourished right, capable of taking on the left? Or is it a weak and ineffectual right, entirely over-matched by its adversary?
Micheal Malice’s 2019 book The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics provides us with an inside view of the dissident right. Malice is perhaps best known in his guise as a notorious twitter troll and political commentator. A self-professed anarchist, Malice is also the author of Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong II. In The New Right Malice proves an expert tour guide into the further reaches of this strange new political alliance of economic populists, white nationalists, anarcho-capitalists, neo-reactionaries, Alex Jones conspiracy theorists, online gamers and trolls, all of whom are held together (if they’re held together at all) by their fierce and uncompromising opposition to what Malice calls the “evangelical left.” The first half of the book deals with some of the key events and issues that formed this new brand of anti-leftism, while the second half covers several of the key figures in the movement (e.g., Jim Goad, Gavin McInnes, Mike Cernovitch, Alex Jones, Ann Coulter, and Jared Taylor). Malice deftly mixes biographical information with personal anecdotes and ideological analysis. The New Right is a pleasure to read and self-recommending to anyone interested in the book’s subject.
Malice traces the genesis of the New Right to the emergence of two groups: the “paleolibertarians” (led by Murray Rothbard) and the “paleoconservatives” (let by Pat Buchanan). Undoubtedly this is true up to a point. But I think we can go deeper than this.
I would suggest that this New Right is made up largely of disaffected libertarians and conservatives—disillusioned by the failure of their respective creeds to stop the “leftification” of American society. This failure is painfully obvious in the case of libertarianism—an ideology which has been spinning it’s polemical wheels for the last seventy-five years.
The case of movement conservatism is a bit more complicated. Following the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, it looked as if conservatism had achieved a permanent triumph. The economy was growing, the Soviet Union had “collapsed,” and the term “liberal” had become a pejorative. Thirty years later the “triumph” of the so-called Reagan Revolution appears a bit on the shabby and tarnished side. We now know the Reagan years offered but a temporary abatement of the left’s inevitable “progress” toward civilizational crisis and destruction. This is clearly seen in shifting attitudes toward socialism over the last three decades. In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin wall, even hard-core leftists like Robert Heilbroner were admitting that socialism had failed and that Mises and Hayek had been right all along. Some incorrigible optimists even went so far as to contend that socialism had been refuted once and for all, and that we had at last reached the end of history. Three decades later, the left is back with a vengeance. A new generation has been taught by leftist controlled educational institutions to believe in the moral superiority of “socialism,” so that recent polls find that forty-three percent of millennials view socialism more favorably than capitalism. The left, it would seem, always seems to gets its way in the end. Why is this?
The leading figures on the New Right are well aware of this problem. Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldburg), perhaps the movement’s most significant political theorist, soberly acknowledges the wanton failure of conservatism’s to keep the left from taking over:
There are a few brief periods of true reaction in American history—the post-Reconstruction era or Redemption, the Return to Normalcy of Harding, and a couple of others. But they are unusual and feeble compared to the great leftward shift…. The principle applies even in wars. In each of the following conflicts in Anglo-American history, you see a victory of left over right: the English Civil War, the so-called “Glorious Revolution,” the American Revolution, the American Civil War, World War I, and World War II. Clearly, if you want to be on the winning team, you want to start on the left side of the field.
In The New Right, Malice places much of the blame for this inexorable advance of leftism on the intransigent stupidity of movement conservatives. As Malice explains:
[S]o-called conservatives have been willful or witless dupes of the left for decades. In contemporary terms, examples include Mitt Romney delivering to Massachusetts what would later become the basis for Obamacare, President Bush appointing David Souter to the Supreme Court, and John McCain sponsoring campaign finance “reform.” … Conservatism is progressivism driving the speed limit. [47]
It is tempting, of course, to blame conservatism for these advances of the left. But is it an altogether just accusation? If conservatives had been more aggressive and stalwart in their defense of traditional values, could they have stopped the progress of the left? Is the inevitably leftward march of Anglo-American civilization, as outlined by Yarvin, solely, or even primarily, dependent on conservative imbecility and cowardice?
The problem with the New Right’s insistence on the failures of conservatism is that it is based on false premises. The left has succeeded, it is tacitly assumed, only because conservatism didn’t fight hard enough. If it had been more like the New Right—that is, more combative, edgy, aggressive, vindictive, cool, and uncompromsing—perhaps conservatism could have won in the end.
Does the New Right provide any evidence to support this view? Malice would have us believe that the Gingrich Congress of 1995 provides an example of how the “spirit of antagonism” enabled the right to make some headway. But he can only list two noteworthy accomplishments of that combative Congress: the balanced budget and the Clinton impeachment. These were, however, at best only temporary, one might say ephemeral, gains. The Gingrich Congress, despite all its “personal vindictiveness,” [56] left no permanent mark on the political landscape. Since the nineties the left has continued to amass cultural and political power, until there’s hardly an area in America life they don’t control or at least influence. So how again does being edgy and combative help to stop the leftification of Western Civilization? Are there any apologists of the New Right who would like to enlighten us about this?
A more likely explanation for the failures of conservatism could be found by examining the psychological type most prominent within its ranks. Ideological movements are led by intellectuals who, while they may exhibit a gift for scribbling and pontification, have very little else to recommend themselves. The direction of society cannot be altered through mere patter. Intellectuals lack the qualities of leadership and force of character required to change the course of history. Buckley’s conservative movement operated under the illusion that it could halt the progress of the evangelical left through rational argumentation. But human beings, and particularly leftist human beings, are immune to rational argumentation. They are motivated, as are most people, by their sentiments and interests, not by logic and brute fact. Leftists elites are animated by a desire to wield cultural and political power. They wish to change their environment so that it will better mesh with their various neuroses. So while conservative intellectuals were busy scribbling away for their various rags, left-wing progressives and radicals were busy infiltrating and eventually taking over most of the institutions of our society. “Let us be honest: the left controls almost everything,” admitted Congressman Jim Jordan during an interview with Dave Rubin. “The left controls big media, the left controls big tech, the left controls Hollywood, the left controls higher education, the left controls corporations, the left controls big sports, … the left controls the Congress, the left controls the White House.” Conservatism lost because while they scribbled and babbled leftist activists were hard at work at their Gramician march through the nation’s centers of power and influence. You take over a country with deeds, not words.
The New Right suffers from the same problem that has plagued conservatism—that is to say, its expositors are every bit as intellectual as the conservatives they so ungenerously denigrate. The New Right simply operates under the illusion that it is better at promulgating ideas. But this remains to be seen.
Intellectuals are shopkeepers of ideas. They offer their wares on the market and are eager to expand their customer base. Much of the hostility that the New Right feels toward movement conservatism has its source in these market dynamics. As intellectuals, conservatives have been more successful than their more uncompromising rivals. They have out-competed the New Right and have ipso facto enjoyed significantly more success. Since both these movements are basically competing for the same type of consumers—i.e. they both offer what is essentially a kind of patent medicine for the disease of leftism—there was bound to be hard feelings on the losing side.
Malice provides us a taste of the loser’s resentment in Vox Day’s withering disdain for Ben Shapiro:
As is so often the case with the New Right, Day’s contempt is as great for the conservative Shapiro as it is for the left. In 2016 Day wrote that Shapiro is “not pro-American, he’s not a nationalist, he’s just another nominal Jewish ‘conservative’ who is a professional member of the mainstream media’s Potemkin opposition and more devoted to fighting racism than big government.” [105]
In other words, Day is essentially accusing Shapiro of providing shoddy wares—essentially “fake” ideas that are of no use except to provide comfort to the enemy. If you want the real item, if you want someone who won’t compromise in his scorn and horror of the “satanic” left, you must patronize Day’s shop of ideas, with its gaudy array of qanon conspiracy theories, trumpslides, and Dominion server algorithms.
Is the ideological merchandise offered by the New Right really all that much better than what is offered at conservative outlets? If so, how is this superiority to be tested and evaluated? What has the New Right achieved, in terms of influence on society, that suggests a manifest superiority to the ineffectual scribblings of the Buckleys and Shapiros? It might be suggested the New Right was instrumental in getting Trump elected to the Presidency in 2016. Yet why, might we ask, should we consider Trump’s election such a great accomplishment? Was the Trump Presidency able to reverse the inexorable progress of the left? Was Trump able to root out leftists from our institutions and drain the swamp? Other than rewriting some trade deals and putting up a few hundred miles of border wall, very little got accomplished during Trump’s four years in office. In 2020, Trump lost by more than seven million votes. The Trump Presidency, even if engineered by the New Right, was a one-off. It lasted but four years and did not fundamentally change the direction of American politics. In 2021 the left, including the radical left, seems as powerful and influential as ever. What can the New Right, armed with little more than mere ideas, hope to achieve against an ideological movement that has had the wherewithal to seize control of the nation's most important institutions?
The New Right has figured out that the path chosen by conservatism—that is, to attempt to change the politics of a nation through the dissemination of ideas—is doomed to failure. But rather than accepting the dark truth that ideas cannot of their own initiative alter the political institutions of a society, the intellectuals of the New Right have convinced themselves (at least by implication) that if they can only promulgate their ideas in new and more exciting ways, that somehow their movement will succeed where conservatism has failed. If they can change the nation’s culture, they believe they can change the nation’s politics because, as the late Andrew Breitbert averred, “Politics is downstream from culture.” But what if Breitbart is wrong about this? What if politics is downstream, not from culture, but from psychology? What if it's the character of a nation’s elite—the psychological types that prevail within its institutions of power and influence—that play a pivotal role in determining that nation’s ultimate destiny? In that case, the New Right, with its mania for cultural ephemera, is simply whistling in the wind, and we can expect nothing of any great importance, at least in terms of politics, to emerge from it.
The New Right as limned by Malice strikes the impartial observer as a largely toothless and impotent movement of ideas. It may speak with poisoned arrows but uses none. There is a central irony in all this. The New Right is to a large extent merely a reaction to the inability of libertarianism and mainstream conservatism to reverse or even halt the inexorable progress of the left over the last century or so. Yet this New Right, although edgier and far more intransigent, is as politically feeble and quixotic as the ideologies it seeks to replace. The astute reader of Malice’s The New Right will be hard pressed to find anything in the book to convince him otherwise.
Greg Nyquist is author of The Psychopathology of the Radical Left and The Faux-Rationality of Ayn Rand.