I only recently learned what a “groyper” is - you may or may not be familiar with the term?
From what I can tell, a groyper is a hardline white nationalist. Often anti-Semitic, groypers are hostile to mainstream conservatives. To the extent they have a coherent agenda, groypers seem more national socialism than free-market capitalism. Having been involved in the conservative movement for three decades, I’d hesitate to call anyone with such views conservative. Indeed, I’d argue people that think like that are essentially hardline leftists. A generation or two ago, what it meant to be conservative tended to be defined by a small circle of influential thinkers. Figures like William F. Buckley Jr. and Russell Kirk articulated what it meant to be one of us. Today, of course, it’s more complicated. One of the consequences of the digital revolution we’re living through is that anyone can define (and brand) themselves however they like. If a small but loud group of groypers - whose ideas are as ugly as the green frog meme they inexplicably rally around - insist on calling themselves “conservative,” there’s a real risk that they end up shaping, in the public mind, what conservatism actually means. Things aren’t helped by the fact that as in the early days of the printing press, when pamphleteers produced all sorts of scurrilous tracts, the digital revolution is still in the phase of rewarding all sorts of attention-seeking drivel. Look at the mess that the left has got into in recent years, as it has been forced into taking indefensible positions. From denying basic biology (no, a man cannot become a woman) to calls for defunding the police, progressive politics in both America and Britain has increasingly been shaped by its most extreme and unrepresentative activists.
The groypers might turn out to be little more than a passing meme, but here’s why I worry about the long term direction of politics in America and the wider West. The world we live in is the product of the idea that all people are created equal. That’s not to say that we are all the same. But it does mean that we are all of equal worth, and that we should be treated equally under the law. When Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, the principle that “all men are created equal” was a radical, revolutionary idea. By the time Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of a color-blind society where people are judged “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” that same principle had become the established moral orthodoxy. Somewhere between Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 speech and the present day, the political left abandoned the ideal of equality before the law. In its place emerged a new framework: one that measures a person’s intrinsic worth by their position in an ever- shifting hierarchy of victimhood. Under this neo-Marxist lens, immutable characteristics - race, sex, sexuality - now determine moral value, assigning guilt to the so-called oppressors and virtue to the so-called oppressed. This is what spawned leftwing ‘woke’ ideology. Critical race theory, critical gender theory, and related doctrines took root in academia, then seeped into corporate HR departments, government bureaucracies, and the public sector at large. That is why, for years, American university admissions offices and major corporations have openly discriminated on the basis of race - often under the banner of “diversity” or “equity.” It is also why, in my native England - the country that gave the world the ideal of common law (a law that is genuinely common to all) - the legal system now explicitly grants preferential treatment to individuals with certain “protected characteristics.” What if we are now witnessing the emergence of a mirror-image, right-wing “woke” ideology? What if voices on the right begin to say, “Very well - if we are no longer permitted to believe that all are created equal, then let’s not”? The progressive left has spent decades attributing unequal outcomes to systemic oppression. What happens when the right stops arguing about the fairness of the system altogether and instead attributes those same unequal outcomes to inherent differences? I fear the left may one day soon come to regret ever abandoning the principle that all of us, without exception, are created equal. A few years ago, Joseph Henrich’s book The WEIRDest People in the World made a compelling case that Western exceptionalism is real. Westerners, he argued, are genuinely psychological outliers: markedly more individualistic, analytical, guilt-oriented, and trusting of strangers than the rest of humanity. These peculiar traits, Henrich contends, are what turned the West into the primary engine of modern science, innovation, and prosperity. I happen to agree with much of Henrich’s analysis, although I am not convinced of his explanation. The danger is that if the universalist view of human nature is abandoned - if the left’s hierarchy of victimhood is answered by a right-wing hierarchy - much of the traditional conservative narrative collapses with it. We conservatives must be more ruthless in policing our own boundaries. We cannot flirt with ideas that are as big a threat to conservatism as socialism, and pretend they are our ideas. Douglas Carswell is the President and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
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13 comments:
I’m libertarian but dislike liberals as much as conservatives
All people are created equal. That is true. But people, as they mature, can change that. You can remain equal, drop below, or rise above. You are the one who makes the decision.
I guess he's never heard of Nick Fuentez, which means he's been in some sort of bubble for the last 9 years.
1:36, I’d guess 99% of us have been in a bubble as you define it. Nick Fuentes is an obscure nut job.
Nick Fuentes has been covered for ages by both liberal and conservative media, as has his "movement." The National Review started calling him out as early as 2022. And every conservative news source had a take on Tucker Carlson's interview with him.
Carswell can, and should, disavow Fuentes's white nationalism and influence on young conservative men. But to pretend he's just now learning about him is laughably disingenuous.
There aren't any conservatives. To the extent any conservative is conservative, all he is conserving is a place in the slop trough for his own snout.
Your problems started with Limbaugh! There never was a ringmaster in the cage until Trump! Once he is gone they will tear each other apart !
Republicans are as big of a joke as democrats. I have voting power in this state but do not identify with the people……..they are a weird animal. For the rest of life on earth, I’m voting Democrat, asking for as many handouts as ever. The republicans will find a way to steal the welfare money to give their constituents and then defen their actions. They are bigots that say one thing but do another. I’m now a voter looking for handouts. If I can’t have them, give them to someone one else. I’m Democrat until death now.
Likely some truth in your statement......but everyone should pay attention to which way the wind is blowing....Nikki Haley's son Nalin has distanced himself from his Indian roots, and is saying what many are thinking:
He has supported a crackdown on immigration and argued that foreign-born citizens should not be allowed to hold public office in the US. He says has no plans to become politically active, but he does hope to influence the Republican Party to move toward Gen Z's vision., which is Economic/Christian Nationalism.....called America First, without any guilt.
Nick Fuentes is your baby, conservatives, not that of the left’s. If you cannot even acknowledge that, then good f—ing luck doing anything to combat him.
Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.
I am pretty sure Nick Fuentes is 4chan’s baby. That’s an autistic anime image forum.
Good grief! Aside from the fact that our Constitution addresses freedom of religion and at the time, the Catholic church was dominate, freedom from a state supported religion was clear even to the Protestants who came here. Not all were Presbyterians and Lutherans, some were Quakers and Catholics had been pretty good at fighting among themselves. Get a history of religion textbook.
And, never, ever anywhere does our Constitution mention political parties because we had so damn many when it was written. It's our far too rich political parties that ought to be outlawed so we could focus on ISSUES and POLICY!
GenZ doesn't have a " vision". The age grouping nonsense really needs to stop. Sadly, every generation is made up of humans, some of whom are dumber than box of rocks, some who are crazy as a pissed off bat, and some who are trying to do the best they can with what they got. Most humans are influenced politically by their families and peers.
It's not that we don't have thousands of years of history to teach us what to avoid. It's that we continue to think we are so exceptional that we can intuitively avoid past human screw ups.
This groupism is getting to be worse and more profuse than toxic junior high cliques. And, worse, it's become a money maker to divide us into smaller and smaller groups of " groupies". That NEVER ENDS WELL!
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