Yes, You Are On The Right
The rise of independent media figures who look, talk, and act like conservatives—yet claim to be anything but
At the marketplace of ideas, that hallowed virtual ground where truth-seekers exchange intellectual currency, the most pressing concern is no longer over whether the products themselves are any good, but where they ought to go on the shelves. Should they go in this section or that one? Next to Author A or Author B? In other words, classifying the products correctly, giving them the right packaging, putting them in the preferred aisle—these are the considerations that matter most now. It is, after all, a marketplace.
Behold, the state of our discourse in 2019: “How dare you say I’m on the right?” “Oh, so suddenly I’m on the left now?” “It’s funny how I get labeled a conservative when my views are basically progressive.”
In our brand-obsessed age, questions of political taxonomy have taken on a greater urgency than questions of substance. Left wing, right wing, far left, far right, woke left, alt right—these are either curses which condemn their bearers, or runes deployed to protect them. Far from functioning as mere labels, they work rather like portals into the welcoming arms of massive audiences.
This is especially true in one corner of the Twitterverse.
Many of the emergent social media darlings who made their names through unremitting, uncharitable criticism of the left while championing “free speech” have doggedly marketed themselves as being “on the left”—as liberals, as progressives, as out-and-out leftists. Not all of them market themselves this way. Some use “classical liberal” (more on this below) or a bastardized notion of “centrist” or some other term that avoids the reputational indignity of being “on the right.” Others treat the entire notion of distilling an overarching philosophy from their political expression as an inherently bad-faith endeavor. They guard against miscategorization like megacorporations guard against patent infringement, at times even threatening, in apparent repudiation of the free speech norms they claim to uphold, costly (and legally dubious) litigation against journalists who would place them to the right of the optimal position for attracting the largest possible audience.
For this and other reasons, this article focuses more on helping identify past and future exploiters of what I call the Category Error than on calling out specific offenders. But let’s put it this way: you’ll know who I’m talking about.
Even when legal action is not in view, the deployment of political affiliation—“Um, how can I be on the right when I’M ACTUALLY A LIBERAL?”—functions as a shield against the sort of criticism that could complicate a figure’s business standing and intellectual credibility.
Isn’t it fascinating how talk of being a political liberal, or being on the left wing of the political spectrum, only ever comes out as a defensive maneuver, never as a set of values to affirmatively argue for? These people never seem to get around to fighting for these positions, much less engaging in endless tooth-and-nail scrapping like they do against “political correctness” and “postmodernism” and “intersectionality.” As Berny Belvedere put it, when it comes to their public preoccupations, “their liberalism never even trickles in.”
Here, the revival of the term “classical liberal” has been a godsend. This is a label that commentators who act like cookie-cutter right-wingers savvily use to project themselves the true heirs of left-of-center politics. Apparently, at some nebulous point in the past, when “liberal” transitioned out of its classical period and into the dark ages of its identification with progressivism, our independent thinker was left alone with his or her principles. Seeking social asylum, the abandoned iconoclast was forced to flee to the right. These are the Leftfugees.
Despite their assurances that they’re “on the left,” these social-media-powered pundits behave indistinguishably from dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, with all the biases and prejudices typically extended to the left side of the aisle. Every new social flare-up is immediately greeted with zealous reactionary fervor, every bad tweet from a college freshman treated as yet more proof that the left is beyond saving. The right gets the benefit of the doubt; the left gets endless mockery and contempt. Whatever their geographical relationship to the left, they make no effort to hide that they hate it.
Alongside this epistemic harmony with the right, our “independent” critics sometimes take funding from right-wing benefactors whose views coincidentally mirror their own. Don’t these benefactors know they’re giving money to liberals?!
You’ve heard of the Dixiecrats, the Southern Democrats who left the party in the late 1940s in opposition to the civil rights movement? Meet the Ducksiecrats: They act like conservatives, they talk like conservatives, they cash checks like conservatives, but when they lie down at night, they tuck in their beaks and whisper sweet liberal pillow talk under their feathers. They’re politically dysphoric: Looking in the mirror, where the world sees a right-winger, they see a left-winger in heroic and undeserved exile. Ideologically, they live with their mistress in a mansion and rent a pied-à-terre for their spouse.
In theory, this phenomenon shouldn’t be limited to the publicly-right-but-privately-left, but that’s overwhelmingly how it plays out. NeverTrump Republicans are often criticized for the opposite, for behaving like run-of-the-mill Democrats, while pantomiming commitment to conservatism to cultivate an enthralled fan base of moderate liberals dreaming of a recovery of pre-Trump centrism. While a few may fit this description, most NeverTrumpers remain committed conservatives whose ideological belief set would map tidily onto Reaganite conservatism. NeverTrumpers often echo the left’s criticisms of Trump, but on the whole remain vocally uncomfortable with and reproachful of the left. The figures I’ve been calling Leftfugees and Ducksiecrats are different: We never get to see any vestige of their leftist membership. So in what meaningful sense can they deny being on the right?
This, ultimately, is what motivates their denials: (a) they don’t like the idea that they’re on the right, and (b) it complicates their branding strategy, which crucially relies on plausibly projecting left-of-center political identification.
The logic is irresistible: Being seen as a thinker who pulls from Column A and Column B suggests a nuanced approach driven by a dispassionate analysis of the facts. The stigma resulting from being pigeonholed as a righty shallows the pool of potential YouTube subscribers, podcast listeners, and Patreon contributors. It’s just not very interesting when a right-winger hates the left — not to the left or to much of the center, anyway. You’ve got to launch your criticisms from inside the system, man! The moment everyone thinks you’re a right-winger is the moment your audience becomes a lot less diverse.
Consider a thought experiment. Imagine that, in a future lawsuit, the personal correspondence of Kellyanne Conway is made available via discovery. Imagine further that, from these documents, millions of stunned Americans learn that the erstwhile loyal Counselor to President Donald J. Trump had in fact maintained personal political views throughout her time at Trump’s side that mirror those of Joe Biden. (Feel free to substitute your preferred Democrat here.) What’s more, according to her notes, she’s voted straight Democratic ticket in every election. In other words, in this hypothetical, Kellyanne is a private liberal.
Rounding out this exercise, imagine that after these revelations came to light, ever the savvy operatrix, Kellyanne steered into the skid, proudly proclaiming that, indeed, she has always personally maintained liberal values, but that Democrats in Congress have of late strayed so far from those values that she was compelled to help Trump Make America Great Again.
How would we, in this scenario, conceptualize Kellyanne? Surely we wouldn’t simply say, “Welp, that settles it. She’s a liberal.” Not because we would distrust the leaked documents—let’s assume their veracity is unquestioned. We wouldn’t jump to seeing her as a liberal because for years she’s acted exactly the way a fiercely committed Trumpian conservative would act.
With the departure of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne has become the undisputed ironwoman of the Trumpian propaganda mill. Every day, the objective of her public life is to make the Republican president look good, to increase support for his policies, to provide convincing ad hoc explanations of the inexplicable, and, ultimately, to win him reelection. If those votes come from the left, so much the better. But how can someone publicly devoted to destroying the left be themselves “on the left” in any meaningful sense?
In this hypothetical, Kellyanne Conway’s public behavior is unambiguously in the service of winning votes for Trump, and her private behavior cancels out only one of those votes—her own. This means we would have to conclude her personal political convictions are far outweighed by her preference for prestige, money, and other trappings of the position. In short, if Kellyanne Conway is privately “on the left,” who cares? It doesn’t matter, and it shouldn’t factor into how we assess her politically.
Here’s the point more generally: What are quiet convictions next to outpourings of outrage? What’s a quarterly disclaimer against an hourly barrage? What could a political figure’s private beliefs ever do to counterbalance their public words or deeds?
The answer is nothing.
If we are to maintain a foothold in this shifting mire of labeling and counterlabeling and constant categorical warfare, we must ignore that which the public figures themselves ignore, and focus exclusively on these factors:
- What issues does a public figure actually spend their time discussing?
A pundit who uses their platform to exclusively attack “social justice warriors,” Democratic presidential candidates, and left-leaning media outlets, ignoring the behavior of President Trump and the far-right, is operating as part of the right, regardless of their closely held beliefs.
- What side do their biases favor?
Reflexive outrage toward the left combined with excessive intellectual charity toward the right is a clear sign that a political commentator doesn’t actually see themselves as part of the left or the center. Regardless of who their tribe used to be, if the right is their tribe now, their actions will favor the right.
- What is the political orientation of their audience?
Social media personalities cultivate a following based on the content they regularly churn out. Disproportionately attacking the left attracts a disproportionate number of right-wing fans, who are simply itching to find a “leftist” or “liberal” they can claim to read and follow. They love the pseudo-authenticity of praising someone on “the other side” (who, wouldn’t you know it, happens to agree with them on everything important). Their financial dependence on a right-wing audience leads the content creator further right. Thus we can predict that the Leftfugee will move further to the right as time goes on.
- What are the effects of their public behavior?
Think back to the Democrat Kellyanne Conway thought experiment. We’ve got two inputs: private Democratic beliefs and public Republican assistance. The overwhelming result of this behavior would be that anyone influenced by Kellyanne would solidify their position on the right. She would be helping the Republican project, and her private liberal beliefs would never even factor in. Or think of the recent mass shooting in El Paso: Is the killer on the left for the anti-corporate statements in his manifesto, or is he on the right because he murdered 22 people out of hatred for Latinos?
We must conclude that if a public figure spends all their time attacking the left, consistently adopting the right’s political playbook and talking points, playing to a predominantly right-wing audience, and seeking to add to that audience by converting people from the left to the right, that public figure is on the right. Private progressive ceremonies and strategically whispered liberal commitments be damned.
We’ve entered a phase of reverse McCarthyism: Instead of cloistered communists hiding behind moderate façades, the present fight rages over outward-facing enemies of the left practicing progressivism away from the YouTube cameras and podcast mics. While McCarthyites believed — or pretended to believe — that communists were organizing in secret, aiding the enemies of the United States, today’s right welcomes the Leftfugees’ pantomime of liberal membership, knowing it’s a better recruitment tool than they could ever carry out themselves.
The next so-called independent media star is likely to identify as “on the left,” yet spend all their time supporting the most base attacks from the right. Intelligent observers must learn to see through this marketing scheme and recognize that identifying with the left and operating from the left are completely different things.
Matt Jameson is a columnist for Arc Digital. Follow him on Twitter @RogueNotary.
