Why I left the Dissident Right

Speaking truth to power

Hi guys,

It’s me, that failed political talking head you vaguely remember from a few years ago. I’m sure a lot of you have been wondering what I’ve been up to since I suffered that devastating professional or social setback that caused me to turn on a steadily increasing number of my former associates, especially since my previous role of “repeating other people’s talking points from several years prior but badly” was so impactful on the broader rightwing cultural ecosystem. Well, I’m finally ready to talk about my experiences, or at least to talk about them in addition to the years of incessant talking I’ve already been doing about them to my shrinking internet ghetto.

I’d like to once and for all condemn the Dissident Right. The Dissident Right is a very real, coherent, and powerful movement that wields unlimited authority in real world American politics with the advent of Donald Trump’s fascist dictatorship. All Dissident Right organizations should strike me from their membership rolls. I will no longer appear at the Dissident Right events that I was definitely being invited to. The Central Planning Committee of the Dissident Right will surely miss everything I brought to the table, accomplishments and talents so numerous and varied that it would be distracting to mention them all here.

When I entered rightwing politics several months ago, the Dissident Right seemed to be on the cutting edge. The maladjusted teenagers and dubious eccentrics who staffed the online circles of the Dissident Right seemed through the lens of my smartphone to be cool and edgy and funny. Clumsily echoing their thoughts and aping their mannerisms allowed me to feel as though I too, was cool and edgy and funny, especially because I received significant professional accolades for being a woman or minority willing to give voice to their unpleasant truths that I barely understood and cared about only to the extent that they benefitted me personally.

However, the confidence I held in the Dissident Right was misplaced. Who would have thought that these people *actually* believed the things they were saying, or that they were concerned about achieving real world goals, or that, if they were just largely apolitical kids having fun on the internet, they might treat me with disdain when I behaved obnoxiously? These ignorant Dissident Rightistas failed to understand that online politics aren’t about improving the world or advancing a larger agenda or even just pursuing your own intellectual interests but rather about advancing your personal brand.

Coincidentally, my personal brand has suffered enormously over the last few years but, believe you me, it’s not in any way my fault. I am disliked not because I am frequently uncharitable or dishonest, not because I effectively ran an ActBlue propaganda account for years, not because I tried to help liberals take political power while holding myself out as a conservative, not because I regularly engage with others in bad faith or misrepresent my views or the views of those who I attack, not because I have very little to add beyond disposable and self-involved commentary, but rather because I am too smart, honest, and courageous.

My years of false, misleading, and not even plausibly true claims, deployed for purely petty or deeply cynical reasons, have no bearing on my current predicament or others’ treatment of me. However, every unkind or insensitive word directed my way, every error or misstatement that can be seized upon and immortalized, must be accepted as my own personal mattress to be carried around the campus of Dissident Right University, a visible reminder of the cruel mistreatment I suffered for senseless reasons far beyond my control.

It was because I am so smart and honest and courageous that I decided to abandon all of my previous convictions only after I suffered the aforementioned social or professional embarrassment, rather than making my new higher principles known when my once-promising career was soaring to new heights. Although I have been widely disliked and circled the drain professionally for years before this public break, let it be known for the record that the Dissident Right can’t fire me: I quit.

The Dissident Right has breached its contract. Who could have foreseen that I might be mocked on the internet for gaining weight? Who could have predicted that I might be attacked in online conservative spaces for lending my support to liberal political candidates? Why might people find it distasteful that I support rightwingers being thrown in jail by leftwingers for dubious reasons? My failed attempts to halfway-adopt a meme lifestyle I heard about online reflect far more negatively on online spaces than they do on myself. I cannot believe that, although I was once tolerated as tedious but mostly harmless when I at least pretended to attempt to contribute to productive efforts, now that all I do is attack rightwingers and help liberals my former peers have very little patience for me. This is not what I signed up for when I agreed to be based.

I know what you might say: “But surely someone as important and insightful as you must understand that you’re turning your back on everything you once stood for.” That’s right, in fact, I now believe the exact opposite of the Dissident Right positions that I built my brand espousing. Either that or, depending on who’s criticizing me, I still believe everything I used to believe but, actually, I believe in it more than the so-called Dissident Right. In fact, I believe in these rightwing principles so sincerely and profoundly that I’ve reached the difficult but inexorable conclusion that the only way to implement those rightwing principles in the real world is to give liberals absolute political power, exactly the same position I’d arrive at if I no longer believed the things I once claimed to believe.

Yes, that’s right. We either need to let liberals win or help liberals win, again, depending on where I’m receiving criticism from. If liberals win, then my rightwing rivals and former associates will be removed or at least embarrassed, and, if my rightwing rivals and former associates were to be removed or at least embarrassed, then maybe I’d look like less of a fucking moron for trying to get Kamala Harris elected.

Please rest assured that I have not decided to adopt this position because of the massive and public social or professional embarrassment I have suffered. I have not radically changed my views because I was kicked out of the groupchat. I did not receive a visit from the FBI where they pointedly asked me about my potentially-illegal contacts with foreign agents. I am not angling for a writing gig at that new magazine that will fold after one or two issues, if it is ever released at all. My foundation did not receive grants from the Open Society Foundation or similar groups which, as I continue to burn bridges, have become the only way that I might continue to enjoy the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed. I’m not mad that I didn’t get a seat at the cool kids table that only ever existed in my own head. This is not a desperate last shot at relevance after I spent years making it clear that I not only didn’t want a good outcome, but that I would try to actively engineer a bad one, for which I was rightly shunned by everyone with a little bit of spine. I have not developed what amounts to a humiliation fetish as generating attention for behaving in distasteful or counterproductive ways has gradually become the only way that I receive any attention at all.

What’s next for me? Well, don’t worry about that too much. There will always be another hokey retard willing to hear me out and provide zero pushback as I lie and create self-serving justifications for my behavior. There’s always another rightwing figure imploding in the exact same way that I did and the three-hour podcast we record on it is going to be a banger. There is always more room on the Island of Misfit Toys. There will always be another liberal activist journalist who wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire but who will allow me to settle scores by leaking or providing self-serving quotes. We’re about 3 months out from the next astroturfed alternative to Trump to pretend to care about and I can’t wait to pretend to support him or her or they. Although I have never accomplished anything and now never will, I promise to always and forever remain very much a hero in my own mind.

More than anything else, I care about tariffs. Yes, everything was forgivable, but I was just so angry about the Dissident Right’s trade policy that I just had to speak up about all of this. Someone had to say something. Someone had to do something. Please ignore everything I’ve been saying for years, it was really tariffs that pushed me over the edge. The article you’re writing is about tariffs, right? Right? Is this thing on?