The Dumbest Online Right In-Fighting You'll Read About This Week (I Know I Shouldn't Be Writing About It)

thought digest, 12.09.2024

A few weeks ago, James Lindsay began tossing around the term “Woke Right,” and soon afterward, Triggernometry host Konstantin Kisin followed suit.

At first glance, the term suggests right-wing policing of cultural norms: cancellation mobs, hyper-sensitivity around labeling, that kind of thing. It’s an interesting critique, especially as factions within the Online Right gain mainstream attention and jostle for influence. I’ve personally written about how some cliques within the Online Right resemble the sort of infighting we once saw on SJW-era Tumblr. It’s unpleasant!

But as soon as Lindsay and Kisin tried to explain what they meant, the picture became more muddled. Lindsay implied he was talking about Christian nationalists seeking cultural dominance, while Kisin tied the concept to identitarianism (essentially, alt-right 1.0-style white nationalism). Yet none of that is particularly new or out of place in dissident spheres of the right-wing. It’s like complaining about Maoists being one group among many in dissident leftist online spaces. You know, I just don’t know what to tell you at that point.

Identitarianism has been around in right-wing dissident spaces for a long time. It’s not exactly surging in popularity at the moment, either. At least, not the kind that Kisin describes.

Other commentators, like Benjamin Boyce and Mary Harrington, offered what I found to be more interesting takes, framing the “Woke Right” in terms of a heightened awareness of power structures. Still, it’s unclear why this “noticing” would be deemed specifically “woke,” or why it signals anything especially ascendant.

If “woke” is merely shorthand for identity politics, calling right-wing dissidents “woke” is, again, absurd. Many of these communities never claimed to be identity-blind, and in fact, it’s their commitment to identity that placed them in dissident spaces in the first place. On the other hand, if “woke” describes a behavioral pattern—cancellation, purity-testing, scapegoating, shifting moral goalposts, etc.—then we might be onto something.

Since it first entered the mainstream, “woke” has evolved into a catch-all term for social-media-fueled righteousness, much like the toxic behaviors seen in fandom. In my opinion, it isn’t inherently leftist. Under conditions of scarcity—academic jobs, media gigs, monetized political commentary—these patterns can crop up anywhere. Where influence and attention are limited, gatekeeping behaviors thrive.

Yes, some right-wing sub-factions engage in dogpiling and moral tests, and it’s not fun to be the target of that. But this isn’t some contagion imported from the left. The Online Right is a diverse ecosystem: wignats, NRx, integralists, BAPists, the list goes on and I’m the absolute wrong person to enumerate what their specific differences are… But point is, I don’t think these are all “the same guy” even if there is sometimes overlap. It’s not All One Thing marching in lockstep.

It’s a competitive media market of pundits and thinkers, many of whom hope that they become standard-bearers of the post-mainstream right. (Others enjoy remaining anti-establishment, and their ideas will shift accordingly.)

Christian nationalists and identitarians are just two of many factions vying for attention and credibility… and they’ve been in this world for a long, long time.

Critics who come from classical liberal backgrounds were never fully at home in these dissident spheres. That’s not an insult. I’m not saying these people don’t deserve a voice in the marketplace of ideas, just that it’s an important and often unspoken category error. If you believed that trans women should be excluded from women’s sports, that #MeToo went too far, that JK Rowling is innocent, that more free speech should be allowed on social media, etc. you certainly challenged certain elements of mainstream liberal orthodoxy. You got hate. You might have been fired from your job. Look at what’s happening to Jesse Singal over on BlueSky—the authoritarian left is a tough crowd.

But that doesn’t make you a “dissident” in the sense these other groups use the term. My sense—and I could be wrong here—is that the classical liberal commentariat are closer to a more extreme segment of the left than a moderate-wing of the (online) right. Again, that’s not an insult.

During the Trump era, the media lumped anyone critical of the liberal establishment into one big tent. This forced strange bedfellows together and created the impression that classical liberals were of a piece with far more reactionary factions. Inevitably, tensions arose. If these critics now chafe at being dogpiled by more reactionary elements on the right—well, that’s the nature of the Internet. No side holds a monopoly on purity tests or status competition.

But instead of calling them woke, say what you mean, attack arguments you feel are getting too popular on their own merits or lack thereof. You were never really in coalition with these guys anyway.