Newsletter #19: The ‘Very Online’ Right still don't know their own audience
PLUS: Barry Keoghan, Mike Tapp, Trump, Grooming Gangs, and more
Good morning.
Once again, we’re going to approach this week through a number of mini-updates. We begin with an intervention on last week’s ‘discourse’ in the United States, before returning to Britain for the rest. Oh, and before we begin: as I basically expected, Tulip Siddiq has now resigned. Starmer doesn’t seem to have been hurt much by it, though.
This newsletter’s agenda: The ‘Very Online’ Right still don’t know their own audience (free); Trump’s victory rally and the ‘Vibe Shift’ (paid); Barry Keoghan and David Lammy: what even is this? (paid); Mike Tapp, a Labour MP of interest (paid); Reform UK has all the momentum — can they now destroy the Tories? (paid); ‘Grooming Gangs’: next steps (paid).
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The ‘Very Online’ Right still don’t know their own audience
I know that I’m intervening in this debate well after it is ‘news’. Nonetheless, I was very frustrated with the terms of the debate, so I will comment anyway — mostly as a warning for the future for the British Right.
In previous years, such ‘luminaries’ as Jordan Peterson were often informing their audience that they should skip college, and instead become plumbers (this typically coming from people who have never done a day of manual labour in their entire lives). Now, although we can doubt whether these advice-givers were the right people to say it, for certain young men this is good advice. As the university intake has expanded, the gains from an undergraduate degree are becoming slimmer and slimmer, and for those who are accepted only to third-rate (or worse) universities, so long as they mostly only care about their earnings potential, such advice might make sense. But even here, this seems to underestimate the average intelligence of the audience of even someone as vapid as Peterson. Most of the people who actually need this advice are not listening to Peterson in the first place.
But at least this debate remained at least somewhat connected to reality. Now, instead of plumbers, the ‘Very Online Right’ in the United States is discussing wages at Panda Express. And rather than the main people involved in the discussions being low-brow, ‘pop psychologist’, ‘self-help’ book writers like Peterson, relatively serious people with relatively serious audiences have decided to sincerely tell their readers that they should work at low-skill hospitality jobs for the rest of their lives (to avoid ‘debt’, or something).
In every society, there are many jobs that no-one really wants to do. People do them to earn money to live. In fact, in most societies, this is the vast majority of jobs available. Even ‘good’ jobs are usually mostly boring. Not everyone can be a Sun King.
Most people, in any society, need to be digging ditches, or whatever today’s equivalent is. All we can hope for is that our countrymen are paid as well as the market allows for these kinds of jobs, and that — hopefully — much of the most tedious work can eventually be automated away, so that humanity can find a better use for their time. Fortunately, in the United States, these people are being paid more than anyone else in history has to do these jobs, and it isn’t even close, either in absolute or in relative terms (i.e., as compared to other developed countries). It seems plausible that a lot of the lower-middle class discontent in recent years in the United States has been caused by the decline of ‘differentials’, as those with bargaining power — in this case, those performing increasingly high-demand manual labour — were able, with the assistance of a friendly Biden Administration, to push up their wages along with or ahead of inflation more than most other people, with the additional costs imposed by this passed on to customers. That isn’t to say that America doesn’t have problems — but ‘low wages’ isn’t it.
It seems that many people are simply baffled by the concept of online anonymity, even those who are — ironically — ‘Very Online’ in the literal sense. They assume that everyone who is anonymous online must either be sixteen years old, or some kind of total loser or misfit — as if there were no other reason to hide one’s real identity than shame about one’s position in the social pecking order.
Over the years, I have met many people through Twitter/X. Very, very few of these people would be well served by giving up on white collar work, let alone acquiescing to a life of menial, unskilled labour. With only a few exceptions, these people have degrees — the vast majority of them from very good universities. Some of these people have an ‘elite’ (as much as I detest this word) CV; others a more middling one. Many, of course, already have very good jobs. Why? Because ultimately, serious interest in politics of any kind, and certainly a genuine intellectual interest (as most anonymous commentators online have), is a minority pursuit. Not many people actually read much at all. Reading something like Pimlico Journal, or — more pertinently — showing a willingness to argue on this sort of topic online is something that interests an even smaller fraction of the general population.
As such, it’s a totally farcical discussion: both sides, for some reason, are talking about Panda Express, when neither side is composed of the sort of person who will be working at Panda Express for their entire lives, or, at a minimum, should be working there for their entire lives. The person who is working at Panda Express is basically entirely absent from the debate (presumably, they’re too busy enjoying their high wages thanks to the general success of the American economy). It’s a total distraction from many legitimate grievances, that also makes you look weak and pathetic to many people who might otherwise be sympathetic: in particular, the way in which rampant anti-white discrimination and extreme mass migration has damaged the career prospects of many talented young men (and indeed women). Nor, of course, can personal career success make up for the collapse of a nation.
As J’accuse columnist Torbert Fahey writes on X (and I hope he doesn’t mind me reproducing his comments here at some length):
The “work” debate has been a polemical disaster. My side has fallen for every piece of bait offered by our opponents… You don’t respond… by entirely ceding to their framing and saying no actually my life is garbage, etc etc… to an outside looking in we’ve allowed ourselves to look like losers and terminally incurious people. I would never in a million years accept someone saying about me that I deserve “empathy” or “understanding”. The elderly aren’t these fading Spartans who need to be taught to accept their b*tchmade kids, though you seem to have completely acceded to that frame…
The garbled message… that we are putting out right now is going to be used by our opponents to say that young American men do not want to work, can’t handle the global economy, must be replaced by migrants. Our audience isn’t only us and younger people, it’s also Trump administration bureaucrats and policymakers who are probably not going to be able to parse all of our arguments and will almost definitely be sympathetic to calls for understanding of those who can’t find work above fast food.
Quite. All I can say is that I hope that when a similar debate hits the shores of Britain — as it inevitably will (in political discourse, Britain is one year behind America, and the rest of Europe three years behind Britain; no, I won’t elaborate on this now) — I hope that we do not fall for the same trap.
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