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Aug. 19th, 2025 10:15 pm
"Not Right, Not-Left, Just Online"
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paperghostI need to make a more introspective and serious article-like writing about this one day when my brain isn't broken. ... That being said, Katherine Dee's latest blog post had me thinking.
And what filled that vacuum? The so-called “right-wing” alt media. What nobody wants to say about these creators, except for maybe the creators themselves, is that they—and indeed, the whole ecosystem they belong to—are not strictly right-wing. They are “not-left” but they aren’t on the right.
Being “not-left” during COVID was simple. All you had to do was disagree with lockdowns and mandates. That low bar brought in a huge tent of people. The tent, of course, had already been built by the excesses of wokeness, #MeToo, etc. COVID filled it out.
These creators shared one message: “The mainstream media is lying to you. We’re telling the truth.” In many cases, they were right. This “not-left” group was absorbed into the Online Right, a sprawling ecosystem that includes everyone from the Dissident Right to anti-woke crypto hucksters to Nick Fuentes’ groypers to Intellectual Dark Web figures to mainstream conservative podcasters to dozens of smaller micro-subcultures and ideologies.
I’m skeptical that the left doesn’t have the same media power—last time I checked, there are more liberal podcasts, magazines, TV shows, etc. than any one person could count. But it could be that they just don’t have the same political influence. Whatever the case, the specter of the Online Right and Alt-Media Ecosystem emerged, full-force, during the podcast election.
MAGA CHANGES EVERYTHINGTrump’s 2024 win exposed the fault lines in what everyone assumed was a unified “right-wing” movement. For some people, being anti-establishment got complicated when your side controlled the establishment. A lot of people who’d been lumped in with the right realized (or had always known) they didn’t like Trump or his politics—it was just that there was nowhere to go. Some people simply changed their mind.
Whatever the reasons, this fracturing created a massive opportunity. All these people with huge, engaged audiences who’d been accidentally sorted into the “right-wing” category were suddenly politically homeless again. They didn’t want to be MAGA cheerleaders, but they also couldn’t go back to a left that had already expelled them for “thought crimes.”
THE GREAT REALIGNMENT Now we’re seeing different types of these creators and audiences sorting themselves out:I've more or less "retired" from this, but I do remember how the pandemic was a gold age of "alternative thinkers" taking advantage of how many people were stuck inside and angry about it. I'll never forget how wrapped up I was in this sphere after my county went under lockdown. I've wasted 7 years of my life to "controversial politics" and making "unpopular opinions" so centric to myself. I haven't bothered to check out "where are they now" with a lot of the content I watched 5 years ago. I don't know if I want to find out. But now liberals and the portion of the left that didn't fall into pure antisemitism are trying to jump in on this train with the whole "dark woke" thing that's pro-offensive but anti-conservative for lack of a better description.
During lockdown it was easy to see all sides as the same and part of "the establishment", near the end of 2018 I became blackpilled and got lovebombed by a tankie who was the only person who reached out to me during an isolated time. When Biden won, it was also easy to continue being "anti-woke" because it was counter-cultural to be conservative. Now that Trump won, the anti-wokes have become "the culture", and seeing everything that's happened in the last 8 months... It isn't fucking worth it to obsess over what "woke" AKA more of a prescriptive than descriptive label even is. I really think obsessing over "wokeness" is borderline privileged when the economy, housing, and healthcare is more important. The "ex-liberal" morons will become single issue over "wokes" and vote Republican, despite nearly every recent recession being caused by a Republican. So many people have been laid off, had their medicaid slashed, veterans benefits lost, and so on, but at least we don't have "woke DEI / CRT" anymore!!! At least we don't see rainbows everywhere anymore!!! Shut up man lol. I never cared about the "DEI" and "CRT" shit. It felt similar to how I felt like I "had to" be on board with Leninism or whatever because I had other opinions in that umbrella. So I just sheep'd in the other direction by nodding along with psychos pretending these were the worst thing ever.
The "big tent" aspect was there in 2020 too. There was always a mix of actual right wingers, MAGA, classical liberals (technically center-right), "old school" anti-idpol Marxists, all under this one umbrella. And now that I'm no longer a "radical" or populist I just find it disgusting instead of an awesome display of solidarity. Because of course there's going to be splintering, even MAGA has had infighting when it comes to Trump's support of H1-B, Elon Musk getting disowned, the spats Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz had over Iran, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Laura Loomer's catfight on Twitter, the pro-Netanyahu side of MAGA vs. the anti-Israel groypers, etc. This shit is so stupid, I hate these people so much.
I often have people online follow me under the assumption that I'm "based" and secretly in the same camp as they are. They always end up disappointed. I don't know how else to explain it to people, I'll probably figure it out when I have free time. I wasted almost half of my adult life on the bullshit and it's time to move on. I'm still not "PC" or "woke" and still skew "exclusionist" if we're using mid-2010s Tumblr lingo, but the real enemy is right in front of us and it's a matter of picking your hills to die on if you want to go out in the world and interact with real people. Not floating opinions or words on a screen from shut-ins. "Radicalness" is a poison that destroys you from the inside.
Snippet from article about the anti-woke sphere
THE ALT-MEDIA ECOSYSTEM
Here’s a story most of you already know. COVID was a great time to try your hand at Internet celebrity. Institutional trust—CNN, Fox, the New York Times, Fauci, the WHO—collapsed for millions of people who suddenly needed new ways to make sense of the world.And what filled that vacuum? The so-called “right-wing” alt media. What nobody wants to say about these creators, except for maybe the creators themselves, is that they—and indeed, the whole ecosystem they belong to—are not strictly right-wing. They are “not-left” but they aren’t on the right.
Being “not-left” during COVID was simple. All you had to do was disagree with lockdowns and mandates. That low bar brought in a huge tent of people. The tent, of course, had already been built by the excesses of wokeness, #MeToo, etc. COVID filled it out.
These creators shared one message: “The mainstream media is lying to you. We’re telling the truth.” In many cases, they were right. This “not-left” group was absorbed into the Online Right, a sprawling ecosystem that includes everyone from the Dissident Right to anti-woke crypto hucksters to Nick Fuentes’ groypers to Intellectual Dark Web figures to mainstream conservative podcasters to dozens of smaller micro-subcultures and ideologies.
I’m skeptical that the left doesn’t have the same media power—last time I checked, there are more liberal podcasts, magazines, TV shows, etc. than any one person could count. But it could be that they just don’t have the same political influence. Whatever the case, the specter of the Online Right and Alt-Media Ecosystem emerged, full-force, during the podcast election.
MAGA CHANGES EVERYTHINGTrump’s 2024 win exposed the fault lines in what everyone assumed was a unified “right-wing” movement. For some people, being anti-establishment got complicated when your side controlled the establishment. A lot of people who’d been lumped in with the right realized (or had always known) they didn’t like Trump or his politics—it was just that there was nowhere to go. Some people simply changed their mind.
Whatever the reasons, this fracturing created a massive opportunity. All these people with huge, engaged audiences who’d been accidentally sorted into the “right-wing” category were suddenly politically homeless again. They didn’t want to be MAGA cheerleaders, but they also couldn’t go back to a left that had already expelled them for “thought crimes.”
THE GREAT REALIGNMENT Now we’re seeing different types of these creators and audiences sorting themselves out:
- The Post-Right: People who burnt out on the online right-wing ecosystem entirely. Think Richard Hanania, Nick Fuentes1, or even Richard Spencer. They’re not leftists, they’re not people who were mislabeled during COVID, #MeToo, or “peak woke,” but they do reject the current-state of the Right. Sometimes they’re Democrats who took “the scenic route.” Sometimes these people are opportunists. Sometimes they’ve evolved.
- The Post-Anti-Woke: Contrarians and other anti-woke voices who don’t like the state of the Right or “anti-woke” media. They built audiences criticizing progressive excess. Some may have even voted for Trump. Too anti-progressive for the present-day left, too anti-Trump for the right.
- Centrists Drifting Right: People responding to audience incentives and cultural energy. They’re following where the engagement is (which has been rightward) or discovering they’re more right-wing than they thought.
- The Older Liberal Center: Similar to the post-anti-woke but coming from a different starting point. These are traditional liberals who never went full-bore woke nor did they pivot to anti-woke. Here, I’m thinking of somebody like Ezra Klein or Gavin Newsom’s new stance.
- The Grift Doubling-Down: Online right figures who’ve discovered that rage-bait pay the bills better than nuanced takes. They’re trapped in an increasingly extreme content cycle to maintain their audiences.
- The New Old Left: I see more and more of these people every day. They’re leftists—and use that word—but they’re trying to improve their theory of mind of the right. They focus more on class than other dimensions of identity.
During lockdown it was easy to see all sides as the same and part of "the establishment", near the end of 2018 I became blackpilled and got lovebombed by a tankie who was the only person who reached out to me during an isolated time. When Biden won, it was also easy to continue being "anti-woke" because it was counter-cultural to be conservative. Now that Trump won, the anti-wokes have become "the culture", and seeing everything that's happened in the last 8 months... It isn't fucking worth it to obsess over what "woke" AKA more of a prescriptive than descriptive label even is. I really think obsessing over "wokeness" is borderline privileged when the economy, housing, and healthcare is more important. The "ex-liberal" morons will become single issue over "wokes" and vote Republican, despite nearly every recent recession being caused by a Republican. So many people have been laid off, had their medicaid slashed, veterans benefits lost, and so on, but at least we don't have "woke DEI / CRT" anymore!!! At least we don't see rainbows everywhere anymore!!! Shut up man lol. I never cared about the "DEI" and "CRT" shit. It felt similar to how I felt like I "had to" be on board with Leninism or whatever because I had other opinions in that umbrella. So I just sheep'd in the other direction by nodding along with psychos pretending these were the worst thing ever.
The "big tent" aspect was there in 2020 too. There was always a mix of actual right wingers, MAGA, classical liberals (technically center-right), "old school" anti-idpol Marxists, all under this one umbrella. And now that I'm no longer a "radical" or populist I just find it disgusting instead of an awesome display of solidarity. Because of course there's going to be splintering, even MAGA has had infighting when it comes to Trump's support of H1-B, Elon Musk getting disowned, the spats Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz had over Iran, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Laura Loomer's catfight on Twitter, the pro-Netanyahu side of MAGA vs. the anti-Israel groypers, etc. This shit is so stupid, I hate these people so much.
I often have people online follow me under the assumption that I'm "based" and secretly in the same camp as they are. They always end up disappointed. I don't know how else to explain it to people, I'll probably figure it out when I have free time. I wasted almost half of my adult life on the bullshit and it's time to move on. I'm still not "PC" or "woke" and still skew "exclusionist" if we're using mid-2010s Tumblr lingo, but the real enemy is right in front of us and it's a matter of picking your hills to die on if you want to go out in the world and interact with real people. Not floating opinions or words on a screen from shut-ins. "Radicalness" is a poison that destroys you from the inside.
