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→ What does the Online Right really want?
America’s Online Right is a disparate group, which is much written-about and much misunderstood. But a new essay by Sam Kriss for Damage magazine makes some interesting points about the taxonomy of influential internet conservatives. Kriss argues that “all the intellectual energy is now on the Right,” though he adds that these Right-wingers “are only united by what they claim to be opposing and superseding”.
Sam Kriss explains the online Right:https://t.co/5P05UarK6w pic.twitter.com/cyVCjxBF2q
— Damage Magazine (@damagemag) August 21, 2024
Looking at writers such as Curtis Yarvin and social-media personalities such as Bronze Age Pervert, the piece includes a semi-ironic visual accompaniment: a political compass mapping out the Online Right’s obsessions with race and sex. Kriss also emphasises the split between “Christians” and “Nietzcheans”, which is dictated less by religious identity and more by what one thinks about equality and individual rights.
The piece concludes that internet Right-wingers’ politics “are all for show” and are rooted in “pure oppositionalism”. What’s more, “the erotic obsession with virile masculinity is just an echo of girlboss feminism”, apparently. The Right afflicted by similar problems to the Left? Surely not…
→ Pro-Gaza MP accused of election intimidation
The victories of five pro-Gaza independent candidates constituted some of the biggest upsets of July’s general election. Most newsworthy was the triumph of Shockat Adam, who unseated Labour frontbencher Jonathan Ashworth in Leicester South by overturning a majority of over 22,000. Adam’s campaign was marred by allegations that his supporters had deliberately intimidated Ashworth; while he denied this at the time, new accusations have been made against him in a report from PoliticsJOE.
Exclusive: Another candidate has accused Gaza independent MP Shockat Adam of serious intimidation during the general election.
Osman Admani, an independent candidate who achieved less than 400 votes, says that Adam’s supporters gathered outside his house just days after he… pic.twitter.com/uK0Rvoqa3L
— PoliticsJOE (@PoliticsJOE_UK) August 22, 2024
A second candidate, fellow independent Osman Admani, has claimed that Adam’s supporters harassed and verbally abused him, gathering outside his home and accusing him of splitting the Muslim and pro-Gaza vote. When PoliticsJOE put the allegations to Adam, he responded that “everybody has a right to stand up and be counted” and that pro-Palestine voters didn’t want a “three- or four-horse race”. In another interview published today, this time with Middle East Eye, Adam claimed that he had himself received persistent verbal abuse, along with his family. Who’d want to be an MP?
→ Poll: Musk’s X prefers Trump to Harris
Elon Musk launched what he called a “super unscientific poll” earlier this week, asking X users whether they preferred Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. The results are now in: the 45th president is beating the current VP 73-27.
Since a lot of people have asked, here goes a super unscientific poll …
Who will you vote for?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 20, 2024
The app’s user base is purportedly over 60% male, while the majority of users do not reside in the US. The findings may not illuminate much about the state of the election, but they do suggest that the app has moved Right since Musk took it over, as conservative accounts have proliferated and Left-wing diehards have migrated to BlueSky or Threads. Is X becoming an echo chamber?
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SubscribeI’ve never heard of BlueSky, so I used Perplexity.
Apparently , users have significant control over their content and timelines. They can customize their feeds and moderation settings, which promotes a more tailored and empowering user experience.
Users can choose which algorithms influence their feed.
It seems easier to create an echo chamber on BlueSky than elsewhere.
It seems BlueSky is 67% male, not so different to Twitter.
What “the online Right” most likely ‘wants’ is to be defined as neither “Christians” or “Nietzcheans” (sic).
I do wish commentators would stop trying to categorise complex groups of human beings; quite frankly, it’s juvenile and reductive.
There’s two types of people in the world: those who reduce humanity down to two groups, and those who don’t.
Ironic comment one assumes given your name? Certainly gave a chuckle and long week so needed
That diagram captures the online right perfectly! I’m sure most Unherd commenters will find themselves in there!
I honestly don’t know what you get out of posting on here.
Among the many things you don’t know…
Well, true wisdom is acknowledgement of one’s own ignorance, and I’m not so arrogant as to say I know everything. Can you say the same?
He’s unburdening himself from what has been.
He’s a wind-up artist, also probably thinks he’s a truth-teller to right wing numpties. Just a fact of life, like piles or a toothache.
Was the article being discussed written by a first year? “Only united by what they claim to be superseding?” Um… pot, kettle, black?
What “not shutting up about china” has to do with “prudish” and “obsessed with race”? It’s too inaccurate to be useful or even funny. What’s worth noticing though is that “progressive” online presence is so shrill and insane that it makes the “right” online interesting in comparison.
“Left-wing diehards have migrated to BlueSky or Threads”
Really? Is ANYONE on Threads? Anyone at all?
Whether it’s the On-Line Right (however that’s defined) or a Far Right element the ‘…erotic obsession with virile masculinity’ not especially new phenomena. But it is useful to draw attention to this tendency which is repeatedly quite obvious.
Now ‘each to their own’, but sometimes the gentleman doth protest too much.