On Punching Right

Thoughts on the “No Enemies to My Right” Argument

Photo by jean wimmerlin on Unsplash

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Perhaps one of the New Right’s biggest gripes about the “Old Right” (i.e., fusionists) is that they supposedly spent too much time making enemies by policing the boundaries of who should be included on the political right, rather than attacking the left, all of which allowed the left to make inroads on the culture.

This argument has its roots in two phenomena.¹ The first (which, as much as the New Right would claim their project is about more than one man, is inseparable from this debate), is the fight in 2015-2016 over Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Never Trumpers, or anyone who refused to vote for a serial adulterer who voted Democrat until 2010 and used to like abortion, were castigated as traitors. In opposing Trump, they were supposedly letting the left win just to come out ahead internecine battles on our side. Now, I have my problems with many who called themselves “Never Trump,” some of whom actually did become Democrats and began castigating anyone who still held their old positions. But even those who held the line on conservative ideology are still lambasted as having sold out to the left for opposing Trump.

The second is the vast coalition which grew up over the decades (in which the New Right has its roots) of outsiders and dissidents with bones to pick with the “establishment.” Buckley exiled the Birchers. Somebody was mean to Paul Gottfried in the 1970s. John Derbyshire was fired from National Review for being a racist (and he wasn’t the only one). Pat Buchanan was kicked out of the GOP (actually, he left willingly). And the neocons (supposedly) shafted the paleocons out of some hot administration jobs in the Reagan administration.² Etc.

Some of these dissidents (but not all of them) were kicked out, or kept out, because they were racist. It was out of these ashes that the alt-right was born (in some cases, we are talking about the same exact people and publications from decades ago). There is some overlap between the New Right and the alt-right, however it would be unfair to say they are the same.

That said, my argument today revolves more around the alt-right than the New Right. Many intellectuals on the New Right, for all my disagreements with them, are figures with good character. Others are unscrupulous in their arguments and idiots on Twitter, but they aren’t racist antisemites. But, too many on the New Right, because they view the cardinal sin of the “Old Right” as its willingness to kick out deplorables,³ are too quick to tolerate and ally with noxious figures on the alt-right. Especially since such figures are seen as “dangerous,” which is cache and supposedly gives the right an edge in a fight against the left.

For years, the defense of Trump has been that “he fights.” Marjorie Taylor Greene “fights.” Kash Patel fights (by, I suppose, penning moronic children’s books about the “Russia Russia Russia hoax”). Setting aside the strange notion that a yellow draft-dodger is a fighter,⁴ this argument presupposes that those of us in the fusionist right don’t fight hard enough because we aren’t willing to offend people on the left.

Now, that argument applied to Mitt Romney and John McCain. But Kevin Williamson was fired from the Atlantic over an old joke he made about bringing back hanging for women who had abortions. Jonah Goldberg used to make jokes about Barack Obama eating dog (which he did when visiting China). Plenty of other “Never Trumpers” were similarly pugilistic in their opposition to the left, and if we are defining fighting as “making posts on Truth Social which offend people,” it’s not exactly a high bar to clear. If the definition of “fighter” means “saying ‘illegal alien’ instead of ‘undocumented migrant,’” then almost everyone on the right is a fighter.

But rather than relitigating old fights, my purpose here is to talk about the alt-right. So, let’s start with Richard Spencer.

Those who argue that we need a “no enemies to my right” policy, just as elements on the left have long had a “no enemies to my left” standard,⁵ claim that those of us on the right “need” all the help we can get. Exiling Richard Spencer for being a white nationalist hurts us in our fight against the left, supposedly.

Well, what does Richard Spencer actually believe? He believes white people are a superior race and that white people should have their own homeland. The left defines this as by definition right-wing. I don’t accept that definition, especially since fifty years ago it wasn’t an unheard of position on the left (one hundred years ago, it was almost a required view on parts of the progressive left). But Richard Spencer is also a proud socialist, who voted for Bernie Sanders, and who wishes the Soviet Union had won the Cold War. It used to be that the most important definition of right and left globally was loyalty to (or opposition to) the Soviet Union. In other words, we have someone who but for his racism would almost certainly be on the left, but who was kicked out of the left (which, the alt-right claims, never kicks out anyone except for racism) and has been kicked over to the right.

And the argument goes that rather than say, “No, we don’t want this guy; he’s not exactly helping our cause” we should welcome him. Why? Because the left has claimed for years that right-wingers were defined by their racism and we should prove them correct? Because we need “fighters” so badly that we should take Soviet-sympathizers who say terrible things about black people?

Years ago, I wrote a piece for the defunct Freemen Newsletter about punching right, in which I concluded that I don’t really think I am. The primary gripe is that fusionists are policing the boundaries of the right too much by kicking out people who aren’t on board with the full program (i.e., people who agree with us on social or cultural issues, but who weren’t on board with hawkish foreign policy or free market economics). I pointed out in that piece that the New Right and alt-right love nothing better than to punch fusionists (they like this more than they like punching left, because they hate the “Old Right” more than they hate the left, just as pro-Hamas protestors hate the Democratic Party more than they hate Donald Trump). But I concluded by saying that as to the question of punching right, I don’t think I am.

For anyone slow on the uptake, I meant then and I mean now that since someone like Richard Spencer isn’t really right-wing in any meaningful way, unless we accept the left’s argument that all racists are right-wing and the right is racist, it isn’t punching right to punch him. Nor, in my opinion, is it “punching right” to argue with a social conservative who likes socialism, since he is objectively (in my view) to my left. Unless we subscribe to the bizarre horseshoe theory (which has some merits, and some defects) which holds that the more left-wing right-wing dissidents go in their philosophizing, the more right-wing they become.

At a certain point, this all begins to sound rather silly. Does it really matter? Someone like Richard Spencer isn’t in my coalition, whichever way you define it. Even if he was, I would reserve the right criticize him. I will be charitable towards those on the right who are charitable towards me, but too often all I ever hear from some folks on the New Right is “dead consensus” this and “you guys are the reason we lost” that. I’m perfectly willing to have interesting discussions with people who share my social views, but who dislike market economics, or who are skeptical of foreign interventionism, provided we are willing to engage in good faith (I do have friends on the New Right, and our conversations aren’t always acrimonious). I’m even perfectly willing to read white nationalists and race realists to see if they have something to say.⁶

But I believe the fusionist right was correct to kick the racists out of the coalition and I think the GOP should do it again. The alt-right belongs off to one side, in a swamp, into which we can occasionally make forays to observe chuds in the wild. But they do not meaningfully advance conservative ideas. If anything, they hand the left ammunition and make its best arguments for it. Next time I’m looking for a fighter, I’ll look for someone who doesn’t pull his punches in any direction.

1. There are two lesser phenomena which also play a role, the dissatisfaction with the Iraq War and the anger over the financial collapse in 2007-2008. Both of these fueled the populist backlash against traditional Republican support of free markets and hawkish foreign policy, and paved the way for Trump’s rise. You’ll note I did not mention anything about free trade and factory jobs leaving and the China shock. This is a red herring, and never resulted in enough job losses to meaningfully fuel populism except as an excuse for anti-trade activists to latch onto.

2. Not everyone who makes this argument, but some who make this argument, are really upset that too many Jews were hired instead of white Protestants.

3. If this word triggers some readers, I’m not using it as a synonym for Trump voters, but as a descriptor of the swamp of neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, white supremacists, race realists, white nationalists, and Jew-haters who style themselves the “alt-right.”

4. In case anyone is unclear, I mean the guy who lied about bone spurs so he didn’t have to go to Vietnam.

5. Which, of course, belies the fact that some on the left do make efforts to police their own side. Most of the cancellations and university shout-downs were of mainstream Democrats, not conservative Republicans. And there’s a good argument that the only reason many of the “alt-right” are on the right is that the left refuses to have anything to do with them over their white supremacy.

6. One argument for why these folks ended up on the right is that almost everyone on the left has an allergic reaction to them, whereas many on the right don’t, even if they dislike racism. I believe that racism is immoral and I saw too much of it growing up in the south, but I don’t run and hide when I come across alt-right writers, as long as they are interesting and not boring (some of them are boring – the ones who merely defend Nazi Germany or, more commonly, the Confederacy). But I read them more out of curiosity and a desire to read things which challenge my views than out of any affinity for them, and I wouldn’t say I read them often.