There Absolutely Are Enemies on the Right

Under normal circumstances, I would never tell people this story, but because I had so many people that worked for me over the years at Right Wing News, no one will know who I am referring to unless they publicly come forward and identify themselves. In any case, back when people started dabbling with saying racist and anti-Semitic things online to get attention, I noticed that one of the people who worked for me had put up a jokey meme on Twitter that showed a well-known conservative in a gas chamber.

I immediately picked up the phone and called my employee. I don’t remember the exact words I used, but it was something very similar to this: “Hey, I saw the gas chamber meme you put up on Twitter. I don’t know if that’s something you really believe in or if you were just being edgy. However, if it’s something you really believe in, it’s incompatible with continuing to work for me.” Their response was to declare that it absolutely wasn’t something they believed in, apologize profusely, and volunteer to take the meme down, which was not something I asked them to do. I said, “Okay,” and that was the end of it.

Something similar happened publicly this year in the UFC, when moronic UFC fighter Bryce Mitchell talked about how wonderful he thought Hitler was, got called out on it by his boss, and changed his tune:

UFC featherweight Bryce Mitchell apologized Saturday for his comments defending Adolf Hitler on his podcast earlier this week.

“I’m sorry I sounded offensive,” Mitchell posted on his Instagram account. “I definitely was not trying to offend anybody, but I know I did.”

In the podcast, Mitchell said Hitler was “a good guy” who “fought for his country.” He also denied the Holocaust occurred and took aim at the LGBTQ+ and Jewish communities.

The remarks drew the ire of UFC CEO Dana White. Although no disciplinary action was taken, White condemned the comments as “dumb and ignorant” after a Power Slap event in Saudi Arabia.

“I know a lot of people died in the Holocaust, and that’s a fact,” Mitchell wrote. “Hitler did a lot of evil things, I think we can all agree on that. I’m definitely not a Nazi, and I definitely do not condone any of the evil things Hitler did.”

Mitchell also added a caption to his post: “In the future I will b[e] much more considerate [when] talking about the suffering of all peoples.”

That brings us to a similarly idiotic group of Young Republicans who recently said incredibly stupid things in a group chat and got outed by Politico.

First of all, Politico, being Politico, hyped up some non-offensive things, took some things out of context, and played some guilt-by-association games. Still, some of the things that were said were extraordinarily stupid and offensive (which was part of the point – more on that in a second):

“Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don’t fit the Hitler aesthetic.”

“We gotta pretend that we like them. ‘Hey, come on in. Take a nice shower and relax’. Boom - they’re dead.”

“n*gga”

“I’d go to the zoo if I wanted to watch monkeys play ball.”

“Great. I love Hitler.”

In a perfect world, we’d like to think an adult would have shown up and said something like, “This is completely inappropriate for anyone, and that goes triple for you because you work in politics. Are you morons? Get rid of this crap, clean up your act, and stop talking like this.”

Of course, that’s giving them more credit than they deserve because there were no children involved. These WERE ADULTS. Everybody there SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER. Moreover, while there has been a lot of debate on the Right about this, happily, many of the worst offenders have already been fired – so there have been real consequences, which is how it should be.

Now, some people would say, “Oh, but these are jokes. Like, there’s no way that guy really loves Hitler.”

Really?

Because I have seen several people who have significant numbers of supporters on the Right openly, unironically praise Hitler. Just to name a few:

You might wonder how we got to this point.

Well, it’s an outgrowth of the way social media and human instinct work.

Social media rewards people for getting attention by any means necessary. Good, bad, whatever. If it gets people to look, it means more attention and, more importantly, MORE FOLLOWERS. The more followers you have, the bigger deal you are. The bigger deal you are, the more money and fame you acquire.

Although it is possible in some extremely limited cases to go too far, it’s actually difficult to do it at this point because ethics isn’t really part of the equation anymore for most viewers or most people with platforms. Popularity is everything, and human decency has become nothing to an awful lot of people (and no, that is not an exaggeration).

So, who is best equipped to get attention in an environment like this? It’s the sociopaths who have no moral qualms about lying or saying the most outrageous things imaginable. Over time, by their very nature, the things that are said become more and more outrageous to stand out.

That’s how we get to Alex Jones claiming that Sandy Hook was a hoax and the families of the victims were crisis actors, or Ian Carroll trying to convince people that TPUSA (or Israel, depending on the day) murdered Charlie Kirk:

There are multiple problems with all of this, but one of the biggest ones is that it starts out as people trying to get attention. However, over time, because human beings are much more influenced than they realize by what they see over and over again and have a tremendous need to feel like they’re being consistent with their identity, it becomes REAL.

In other words, if you go to church every week, care what other Christians think, and look at yourself as a committed Christian, you’re going to start to act in a way that you believe is consistent with that identity. Maybe you start trying to read the whole Bible, give thanks before meals, or start quoting scripture online.

Unfortunately, it works the exact same way with white supremacy, conspiracy theorists, Nazism, and even calling for the murder of your political opponents, as we see on the Left.

Do you know how the Left got to the point that one of them murdered Charlie Kirk and millions of them publicly celebrated it?

They decided there were “no enemies on the Left,” they refused to check the radicals and psychopaths in their ranks, and eventually those very fringe people turned into the mainstream for them because they were good at getting attention, and very few liberals were willing to speak against them.

Can the exact same thing happen on the Right? Not only can it happen, IT IS HAPPENING, although we’re not nearly as far down the same road as the Left.

On the Right, there’s a mainstream, there’s a fringe, and increasingly, there’s a grey area between the two where nutjobs, anti-Semites, white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, and generally sociopathic lunatics are building large followings without quite being thought of as mainstream yet.

It’s worth noting that the number of supporters some of these people have drawn (although they may be amped by foreign bot farms trying to hurt the United States and Israel) have gotten so large that they’ve drawn once mainstream people like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens into that grey area because they think there’s more growth to be had appealing to anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists than catering to mainstream conservatives.

Offline, MOST of these people have tiny followings. The now-notorious nationwide white supremacist rally at Charlottesville drew a few hundred people, and Nick Fuentes, who seems to have a very popular racist podcast, has, to the best of my knowledge, never been able to draw more than a few hundred people in the real world.

So, when they offer up rank anti-Semitism, monkey jokes about black people, and ludicrous (but entertaining) conspiracy theories, keep in mind that it comes with a brutal political cost. Most good people don’t want to be associated with that kind of thing. That’s why the argument that we should unite with these degenerates is so ludicrous.

The GOP currently controls the presidency, the House, the Senate, along with the majority of state legislatures and governorships – and unlike many times in the past, Donald Trump is DOING SOMETHING IMPORTANT with all that power. Trump is currently delivering a once-in-a-century level of positive reform and good governance while he tries to bring in more black and Jewish Americans to EXPAND our coalition.

We want to throw that away for what? Edgelords making unambiguously racist jokes? Diehard anti-Semites who rant about Jews all day long? Nutjobs who think dinosaurs are “fake” and “gay” (Yes, really).

Why would we support that anyway? If you are only opposing white supremacy, Nazis, anti-Semites, and conspiracy theorists because of the Left, you need Jesus. You’re supposed to be against those things because they’re wrong. Are we not the same people who roll our eyes when liberals call us Nazis? The people who’ve been endlessly frustrated because so many black Americans have believed lies about us being racist? So, do people want to lose the country and become what the Left has been claiming we are for decades in return for what? “Owning the libs” in some weird way by showing that they can’t make us condemn something grotesque?

What are people thinking? Of course, most of them aren’t. It’s all, “This person is entertaining,” or “The Left is worse, so everything we do is okay,” but ultimately, continuing in that direction will cost us our movement and our country. A lot of good people will simply check out if that’s what the conservative movement becomes because, like the Left, it will no longer represent who they are as human beings.

How do you change this dynamic?

It starts with calling out bad actors on the Right because without pushback, the worst people win by default. What it all comes down to is we’ve got to stop pretending that we have no enemies on the Right because if you care about your country, your party, and the conservative movement, there most certainly are.

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