For my first paid-subscriber-only post, I want to talk extemporaneously about real-world community building.
Since 2021, there has been a general agreement that any meaningful change must start in the real world. For the right at least, much of the IRL focus was born from the impression that “the internet had been lost” during the COVID years. I find online history interesting, so it might be worth a rehash.
As late as 2019, there was the general impression that the right was “strong online”, “weaker on the ground". But things were rapidly changing. Altogether, what had been the post “Gamer-Gate” movement (what we might call the internet’s right-wing Renaissance) had grounded itself on the dual rocks of pandemic lockdowns and the ascendency of left-wing, stream-based, drama-politics.
Really, the two phenomena cannot be separated. The COVID years demonstrated a certain futility to populist politics. The government was going to do what it was going to do, regardless of the people’s will, or the specific elected leaders in office. Public perception could be adjusted with inconvenient opinions (and sometimes facts) excised from the only social media platforms that mattered. And, at the same time that the swamp-creatures of the establishment were flexing their muscles, online reaction was showing its underbelly.
It turns out, somewhat predictably, that the populous energy of 2015 was altogether short-lived once the prospect of easy victory had faded. The majority of people were there for the memes and dunks on leftist lol-cows, but they wouldn’t stick around when things got hard. Online audiences just wanted to laugh and feel like they were winning with minimal effort. They wouldn't follow creators onto alt-tech platforms after the ban hammer was dropped, they wouldn't change their consumption habits, and many were perfectly willing to change political teams if the political entertainment was better (or easier) on the other side.
Lockdowns and ban hammers were enough to institute the dominance of stream-based left-wing creators, largely focused on drama, "safe-edgy" politics, and government-approved radicalism. Could they be refuted or properly argued against? It didn’t matter. Arguing against these new political personalities seemed to miss the point. No one really believed in what they were saying. Their approach to politics was about identity, comfort, and self-affirmation. And the right could not compete with the left in the game of para-social popularity and dopamine delivery.
But not everything was lost. The left was in many ways weaker than it ever had been. Maybe, when COVID ended, things could be different. Maybe the real strength of the dissidents was in the real world, the world most online leftists desperately wanted to escape.
And so, as COVID receded, people began looking for deeper engagement and organization, IRL. Did the effort work?
Well, Partially.
Certainly, the right-wing dissident space was better at translating itself into the real world than its left-wing counterparty which largely remained in its hug box, satisfied to be swallowed up by the narcissistic dopamine drip, its main creators still circling the drain of drama and outrage. And, the online right has had some minor successes making itself an actual movement. Looking just at the projects that I am directly involved with, our basket-weaving efforts are still going strong. And there is a vibe-shift afoot bringing a larger number of the classic right towards the dissident perspective.
But as many pointed out, there are a large number of challenges with real-life organization for modern right-wingers persistently besetting deeper organization. And while we might be able to outcompete the narcissistic online leftists in engaging with broader institutions, the right's other more mainstream rivals are leaps and bounds ahead of us.
After all, the best-case scenario was the righties would be "the first off the line" in the "RETVN to life" post-COVID world, reinvigorating their own communities, while the masked hypochondriacs locked down for the 32nd time.
However, over-optimism aside, nothing like this happened. Moreover, those dissidents who made efforts in real-life engagement with local institutions encountered distinct difficulties not faced by mainstream progressives.
Readers from urban areas can attest, the barriers to entry for right-wing dissidents, relative to left-wingers, can't be overstated. The supposedly neutral institutions that I interact with, my housing complex, my corporate job, shopping establishments, or the numerous "local" social media apps, will never miss a chance to direct participants towards progressive-activist networks on the off-chance that they might be sympathetic to the cause.
You know the routine; special LGBTQ and BIPOC social events, celebrated national progressive holidays, and broader "education" on left-wing propaganda under the pretense of "awareness" and "responsibility". And it goes without saying that any attempt to organize around ideas or habits broadly coded as a dissident is greeted with complaints that you are trying to "politicize" things.
But this is old news, right? We know Conquest's Laws of politics. We know that leftism (especially in its moderate liberal form) is the presumptive religion of the West's total state. We should expect neutral institutions to move to the left, or just be generally progressive if not explicitly committed to being right-wing.
But really, the problem is worse than that. Because, as many basket-weavers will know, interfacing, even with ostensibly conservative organizations, is an incredibly difficult task. There is resistance, skepticism, and suspicion among people who should be our allies.