New Times Demand New Strategies
The Age of Trump opened with a psychological counterrevolution. Memes, edgy humor, and the regular humiliation of our so-called elites ruled the day. But some have adopted this as a permanent rhetorical strategy. Like Trump himself, however, the “Based Way” was never actually supposed to define the counter-revolutionary project in every phase going forward. It was born from a set of specific historical conditions that have changed markedly in the intervening years since Donald Trump crashed the uniparty’s merrymaking.
Back in 2015-16, when a small segment of the Right was just beginning to flex its muscle, disarming our so-called cultural and political elites by constantly shaming them was necessary. The mountain of failures they amassed in the decades following the end of the Cold War needed to be highlighted over and over again. They needed to be reminded of their dismal track record of managed decline. In order to wipe their self-satisfied smirks off their faces, the Right deployed irony, irreverent jokes, and general disdain.
The cultural-political landscape of that time was bleak. Anons had yet to be unmasked, and publishing houses like Passage Press had yet to be founded. The Left had an iron grip on social media, and peak wokeness was years away (the 1619 Project was published in August 2019). Bill O’Reilly still blared from the television sets of Boomers every night. The term “dissident” was an accurate description of anyone who broke from our political and cultural consensus, not just those who were deemed to be on the “alt-right” (remember that term?).
Outside of a small core of true believers, the idea that Donald Trump could actually win the 2016 election was thought to be a pipe dream. And if the miraculous happened and Trump was victorious, there was only an extremely small pool of competent, talented individuals who could staff a potential Trump administration.
Institutions that are now viewed as key players in propelling the New Right hadn’t been created. For example, American Moment, which trains and funds young talent to be put into influential political positions, wasn’t founded until 2021. American Compass, a think tank that’s trying to restore a more nationalistic brand of economics, wasn’t around until 2020.
But the doors have been blown off their hinges since 2016. Trump’s two presidential terms, Elon’s buying of Twitter, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Kyle Rittenhouse being found not guilty, and a new grand strategy that rejects the failed foreign policies of the past are just a smattering of the top highlights since Trump entered the national political arena.
No longer a group of outsiders who are working to bust down the door, the Right has racked up some notable achievements considering where they were 10 years ago. But they need to adjust their strategies accordingly. We are now entering another phase in which intelligence, effectiveness, strategic capability, and a record of accomplishment are necessary to lead. Competence needs to be valued over pithy X posts. Frequent blackpill spirals need to be seen less as evidence of great intelligence and more as an indication of a jaded individual who leads their followers down dead ends. Workable solutions, creative policies, and well-thought-out answers to our biggest public issues need to be proffered, not sensationalist posts written by AI intended to gin up the rabble.
In a recent interview conducted by Chris Rufo, Mark Granza, who founded the online journal IM—1776, spoke about why letting social media shape culture at the highest levels is not serving the Right well. Granza notes that the Right faces a significant problem: while they remain mostly locked out of notable cultural institutions, they’ve allowed the algorithm to train their thoughts and habits.
Elon’s takeover of Twitter was certainly a boon to the Right—think of Nick Shirley’s recent spate of videos uncovering the rampant fraud at Minnesota day care centers. It’s not an overstatement to say that it was one of the leading factors why Trump won in 2024.
But lately, the platform is turning into a fight to the bottom. Granza points out that X rewards “mocking and memes” over thoughtful engagement. Quality content is buried, while slop and drive-by takes are way up. Top accounts vie to get the coveted Elon repost while content creators churn out ragebait intended to make them more money. As Conundrum Cluster has noted in a prescient essay, “Many today claim that they want a new rightwing culture to accompany the present ‘vibe shift’ when really they just want someone to repeat their own views back to them.”
If you don’t believe this, simply peruse X on a Sunday afternoon. Instead of Bible verses or posts about theological topics, you will witness the same political bickering, blackpilling, and back-and-forth sniping that’s showcased there the other six days of the week. (I’ve mapped out a different path for how Christians should use social media on the Sabbath.)
All told, Granza notes that “In the end, people are trying to produce culture on platforms designed to prevent culture.” I’m not quite as pessimistic as Granza and hold out hope that social media can still be part of a broader strategy to reform current institutions and build new ones. But his point remains: the Right must think about how circumstances have changed and match its strategies accordingly.
One answer to the problem Granza highlights is a return to the physical realm. He contends that we must recover a sense of place. “A real community is a set of people who constantly see one another—neighbors, churches, bars, barbershops,” Granza notes. “Online, we use the same word, ‘community,’ but remove the physical space, and we lose something essential. When you ask older people to think about community, they think of places.” Analog life will be increasingly important in the coming years.
Another solution is guiding young men away from the pitfalls of digital-only discourse and toward living productive lives. At The American Mind, Justin Lee recently laid out a series of helpful guidelines on that score.
Young men need mentors who can break their slavery to the digital world and work alongside them to establish a quality way of life in the physical realm. Lee exhorts those in public and private positions to “destroy the power structures that police masculinity, privilege only feminine modes of conflict, and pathologize ‘whiteness’ and heterosexuality.” Connected with this insight is his spot-on admonition to cease “enforcing taboos through denunciation,” which continues to be a cancer in conservative political circles. The Right should not retain an ultimate allegiance to “the hyperreal Longhouse.”
Opening pathways to connect young men with work is also key to this project. Lee calls for “opportunities” to be created that offer “gainful employment for young men that demand their agency.” “At the national level,” he writes, Gen Z men “who exhibit healthy, attractive masculinity” should be elevated and spotlighted. As Jacob Savage’s viral online article for Compact suggested, “pathways to prestige careers, especially in cultural production,” need to be reopened, Lee says.
The Right will continue to be condemned to mediocrity if they only spend their time creating memes, making esoteric inside jokes, and merely offering commentary on daily political matters from the comforts of their couch. Though it’s important to have fun online (Curtis Yarvin might be having the most fun of anyone on the Right), now is the time to get serious about steering the country in a better direction. The opportunities are plentiful—but the Right’s aim needs to be much higher. As Machiavelli counseled in The Prince,
For as men almost always follow the beaten track of others, and proceed in their actions by imitation, and yet cannot altogether follow the ways of others, nor attain the high qualities of those whom they imitate, so a wise man should ever follow the ways of great men and endeavor to imitate only such as have been most eminent; so that even if his merits do not quite equal theirs, yet that they may in some measure reflect their greatness. He should do as the skilful archer, who, seeing that the object he desires to hit is too distant, and knowing the extent to which his bow will carry, aims higher than the destined mark, not for the purpose of sending his arrow to that height, but so that by this elevation it may reach the desired aim.
Competence, prudence, intelligence—and, yes, boldness, as ever—are needed to navigate the challenges ahead.
