199 Comments

Isn’t this what Vivek Ramaswany’s whole campaign is about? Publicizing the easy anti-woke levers that can be pulled to incorporate doing so into the Republican platform? I think there’s reason to have hope in this arena.

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Yes. Maybe the Grover Norquist of anti-wokeness is Vivek, or indeed Richard?

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What do you think will happen to the Demoralized DIEvy League? Faculty and students there are 90%+ liberal, most of them far left. After graduation, they continue their long march through the corporations, media, government, NGOs, etc.

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This is the part so much of the right misses. The footsoldiers.

The doomerism Richard mentions is schizophrenic, because a lot of the same doomers also say "go woke, go broke".

The problem - and to be clear, it's a solvable one - is that the diversity staff nationwide must now come close to the six figures, if not already past that point, between academia, government, and private business. These people aren't just going to disappear. It's going to be very, very tough to replicate recent successes in places like Florida nationwide. But it's not impossible.

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That doesn't seem like a schizophrenic position. Large institutions going "broke" (more typically this means becoming dysfunctional) doesn't automatically mean new institutions instantly arise to replace them. That's the whole reason the left focuses on institutional takeover to begin with - institutions are hard to build and powerful, so if you capture them you can abuse that power for looooooong periods before all the juice is squeezed. It's perfectly compatible to believe that wokeness = broke(n)ess = doom.

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That's fair. My contention is that most of the world lives with what we'd call brokenness and it's very rare for all juice to be squeezed.

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Professions much bigger than DIE have been wiped out before just through technological change, and those people were useful! Secretary was once one of the most common jobs, not so much anymore.

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I wouldn't be worried about the Ivies. Faculty may lean left or liberal, but it's mainly administration that leans woke. The difference at this point is big enough to drive a wedge through, which of course has already been done. Sure, DeSantis or Ramaswamy or whoever decides to clean the stables could make too many stupid mistakes (some of which have already been made -- installing overpaid sweethearts on the New College board -- and some of which may still be made, such as cancelling tenure; but DeSantis tends to learn from mistakes, so I am fairly optimistic). But short of anything particularly egregious, I expect faculty to mostly react with a sigh of relief. There will be fights in and around learned societies, and the occasional journal will split up, but STEM faculty at any reasonably functional school prioritize research over politics, not to mention that many who inserted appropriate links and slogans on their website had a fairly tangential concord with them in the first place.

Some data points: I can only speak for mathematics, but from what I see, e.g., Kendi/DiAngelo-style racecraft has not taken hold in the community, pronoun signatures have plateaued at something like 30% with no explicit peer pressure, and I have not seen any campaigns against in-person conferences on the basis of climate. Maths Twitter is not taken seriously by most professional mathematicians. And there is a lot of discontent with math-ed activists a la Jo Boaler in the community, which is additionally immunizing against a bunch of bad ideas. After 2021, pressure to appear progressive has greatly decreased, and I'm not sure what could bring it back (maybe a second Trump term, but I doubt that even that would change much; novelty is a big factor in this).

What becomes of demoralized students and defenestrated administrators is another story, but my money is on them moving on to find another meaning to their life. It's judges with lifetime appointments that worry me most.

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> STEM faculty at any reasonably functional school prioritize research over politics

Then there can't be many such schools because the flood of highly ideological papers posing as scientific research is of truly biblical proportions.

I think you may have a too restricted view of how ideology affects research output. Just because a paper isn't using the word equity on every page, doesn't mean it's not biased. Ideological bias runs very deep. A good example is how epidemiologists during COVID didn't even bother considering let alone simulating any proposed solution that wasn't entirely collectivist, and how they instantly ganged up on anyone who proposed a non-collectivist approach (great barrington etc). Likewise climate science frequently appears to be motivated reasoning, where academics start from "what would collectivism look like" and work backwards from there to pseudo-science that can be used to claim it's required or inevitable. That's why there's such a strong (relatively speaking) climate skeptics movement. The output is just so transparently scientism. It's very visible in the most recent IPCC report where they do in fact use a lot of DIE language but the underlying problems were visible even before that.

And obviously social science is largely a writeoff.

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deletedMar 27, 2023·edited Mar 27, 2023
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This graph is measuring something slightly different from what I've been talking about. It's not showing a rise in wokeness or leftwing radicalism, but a decline in classical liberalism and its replacement by who-whom thinking. It's not a good dynamic either way, but the effect upon a change in political climate will be quite different: "True" lefties would put up a fight; cynics will just paint their flags in new colors, change the slogans on their websites and replace one set of buzzwords with another in their grant proposals. My money is on the latter happening in most of the top schools.

I haven't seen much cluster hiring IRL; maybe maths is just uniquely unsuited to it?

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Maybe 70% of the students are far-left at Ivies. And half of those are due to high-school indoctrination and peer pressure - not due to having thought about it. The problem with the Ivies is neither the students - or even the faculty. It is the administrators. The administrators are drunk on the power rush that the Cultural Revolution II mob affords them.

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Peer pressure is a huge factor. No one wants to be caught out. But once graduated, folks hopefully will begin to grow brains and think independently. This will occur once they have to pay taxes and begin to have families.

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Mar 26, 2023·edited Mar 26, 2023

This is absolutely ridiculous. The only reason home schooling is on the rise is because the left controls the major institutions so much that its basically impossible to stop them at this point so parenta just take their kids out of public schools or never put them there to begin with

The left controls every major institution from Hollywood, public school system, media, the fbi, the cia etc. hell even the military is going woke at this point. The conservatives bascially have nothing.

Yes tax cuts for corporations which many right wingers dont even care about is one thing conservatives have won on. Guns in some ways like you pointed out. However guns used to be allowed in school. they used to have gun clubs back in the day. They also didn't always have automatic gun bans or bump stock bans. guns are a mixed bag but I see even republicans starting to cave on gun rights and even supporting red flag laws. I wouldn't consider that a win.

Abortion the most recent win was just a reversal of a former loss. its not like there's a national ban on abortion. Its a stalemate.

Conservatives have lost on all the LGBT issues, so much so that now pedofillia is becoming next up for the left to normalize. Femenism is so normalized that many women refuse to have kids. The left has also steamrolled the right on bascially every racial and immigration issue which isn't just about a white majority. Much more to the topic than that. Conservatives have gotton their ass beat so bad time and time again that many have embraced moderate left wing views thinking these are right wing views. Not realizing the right wing view on the issue is so far outside the new ovetin window you cant even see it anymore. Not to mention the embracement of trans conservatives like Bruce Jenner, who killed someone btw but hey he's a trans conservative so who cares. What we have now is two socially left parties, one that wants less taxes and more guns and one that wants more taxes and less guns. With everything else fairy similar but one just being more moderate than the other on a given issue but neither fundimentally opposing each other on the given cultural issue. Its why I no longer vote republican because it's pointless. At least if the left dominates government they typically push the view point too far too fast and its rejected by most people. When conservatives are able to get into power in similar numbers all they do is slow it down which is worse because then it boils the frog and becomes normalized. Conservatives on most issues just do more harm than good. As someone once said Conservatism in America is just progressism driving at the speed limit and unfortunately that has become true. Im convinced the conservatives at the top dont even want to win.

the only way out is a parallel society and telling the federal government to fuck off we're doing what we want.

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Agreed. Or, as the trans Dr. Dierdre McKlosky said: "Progressivism is slow socialism."

(Not sure anything other than your first and last sentences are criticisms of the article.)

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well the wins conservatives have gotton are really wins for Libertarians. Low taxes for corporations aren't necessarily conservative views nor are gun rights. Paternalistic conservatives are an example of conservatives who are not necessarily for either. One nation conservatives are another example. Hell some polls show even a slight majority of republican voters are for universal healthcare in some way so its not like it's rare to be a market skeptic conservative in America. Many of the voters seem to be market skeptic conservatives while the polticians are free market conservatives or really just libertarians. Conservatives in almost every country except America aren't even for gun rights. As I said Abortion is more of a stalemate than a win.

I should have added this to my original comment. These are wins for Libertarians not necessarily Conservatives. In America conservatism and libertarianism have become deeply intertwined at the highest level thanks to William Buckley but that's not universally true around the world. Also many conservative voters in America have become disillusioned with this mix aka fusionism as well and want Libertarianism out of their Conservatism. With the exception of gun rights which is the one unique view of Conservatives in America that likely wont ever die and rightfully so thanks to the constitution. However as I said its not really a conservative view. its an adopted Libertarian view.

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That's not really true, the pro paternalist wing of GOP voters are mostly terminally online. Most in real life support a healthy dose of libertarianism

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Apr 14, 2023·edited Apr 14, 2023

There's no such thing as healthy dose of libertarianism, libertarianism is cancer through and through but yeah a lot of republicans are cringe libertarians but libertarians are like born again Christians they are loud and always want you to hear about their faith. GOP is not as libertarian as the left wants people to believe though, even if many are.

Data has come out on this and slightly more republicans support universal healthcare and I'm pretty sure libertarians don't support that. Sometimes people forget just how many working class people support the GOP. Especially in the south and I can promise you most southern working class republicans are not libertarians. They're typically fiscally center left and socially right wing. Many of their ancestors had similar views and voted democrat. Back when the democrats still had a socially right wing to their party. Similar to the labor party in the UK who left the labor party for the Brexit party and conservative party because of Brexit and social issues. Of course the republican party always had a fiscally center left to their party with Teddy Roosevelt and the others with similar views which includes Richard Nixon who was the most popular republican of all time before Watergate.

As I said the libertarian republicans are disproportionately the politicians because of their donors. The voters are a wide range of different ideologies but most are not libertarians

Even many that are still care more about the social views than the economic views.

There's two polls I've seen. One that said 54% of republican voters support some kind of universal healthcare but this one is in the 60's. I think some people forget Donald Trump ran on universal healthcare as part of his platform and he has steamrolled all republican competition.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/poll-a-majority-of-republicans-support-medicare-for-all.html

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Feminism is dead. The trannies killed it and with it all the Lesbo bars. If people aren't having kids it's primarily for lack of money and/or the high cost of living.

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i disagree with that assessment. femenism isnt dead it's just been restructured. it's now part of intersectionality where the ultimate evil is the straight cis gendered white male and the opposition groups make compromises to stay allied in their fight against the straight cis gendered white male so yes femenists must give a little like allowing men to join female sports and not acknowledging that white men are actually the least likely to rape and harass women. if femenists where allowed to be purely femenist they'd be transphobic, homophobic, racist and xenophobic. There's even a term for that style of femenism, white femenism which is anti intersectional. however that's now viewed as helping to perpetuate the white patriarchy by mainstream femenists. For them to now achieve femenism they must opoose all of these things as much as possible. Even if it negatively effects women directly or indirectly in the short term because in the long term it helps to bring down the white patriarchy which in their mind is the ultimate way to help women. Of course none of this actually helps women, feminism has always been a war on women and feminity.

this isn't an endorsement of anything i mentioned here nor an opposition to it. just an assessment of what they believe from the research ive done on the topic of femenism and intersectionility in America through the years.

BTW money is definitely part of it but typically when women say they don't want kids it's because they want a career and to sleep around aka feminism. Of course the whole scare mongering of climate change. Not to mention telling white women that white babies=white supremacy. Think about it like this many third world countries that are extremely poor have much higher birth rates than America so putting all the blame on money isn't correct. Putting the blame on solely any one thing is incorrect. It's based on multiple factors.

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It's easy to parody this article as "if you ignore demography, culture, religion, house arrest for a cold, and leftist mobs burning down cities with the active support of the government whenever they want and just focus on some movement conservatism hobby horses plus tax cuts for liberal billionaires, then actually conservatives are winning', but there is a grain of truth here: abortion and guns should be carefully studied to understand under what circumstances the Right can win in a democracy. But there is a meta point that keeps flying over Richard Hananiah's head: the fact that the Right is retarded and spends all its time on dumb stuff isn't some factor that you can separate from the question of why the Right keeps losing in democracies, it is itself *a cardinal structural feature of democracy* and you can't fix it without replacing the system.

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We do not currently have "house arrest for a cold" and states have acted to restrict authorities from locking down without legislative permission.

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Whatever this is, it is not an objection to the article above.

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RH's argument is that the Right is not boxed in by the inherent structure of democracy, but can win if it just focuses on the right things. But this assumes that what the Right chooses to focus on is something you can just change, but actually it's also a structural feature of democracies.

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Definitely an improvement. Now we can see where you went wrong. "RH's argument is that the Right is not boxed in by the inherent structure of democracy..." That's a characterization of the alt-right frame of mind, not the author's, I believe.

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He's trying to refute the NrX view that democracy is inherently leftist and thus activism is pointless and harmful, but he doesn't understand it. TBF many advocates of the view also don't understand it.

RH's understanding of society is consistently hobbled by his pseudoscientific methodology of isolating variables that cannot be isolated. He is essentially saying that 'if everything was exactly like it is except the Right had better priorities then everything would be better', but the priorities of the Right are not free variables you can just adjust, they are emergent properties of the system just like everything about the Right. It is the equivalent of me saying 'if I was exactly like I am, but only needed 2 hours of sleep a day, I could be much more successful', technically true but completely useless.

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Regarding immigration, you say “some conservatives are just closet (or subconscious) white nationalists.” However, you miss the point that a major driver of immigration has been the belief that it will deliver the Democratic Party a permanent electoral majority. That’s part of the argument of Judis and Teixeira’s “The Emerging Democratic Majority”, from 2004. They take it as read that liberal, small-government attitudes are basically a white thing, so if the proportion of whites in the population reduces, the electoral appeal of these attitudes will also reduce - to the benefit of the Dems.

Back in 2013 Hal Paschler surveyed “U.S. Immigrants’ Attitudes Toward Libertarian Values”. He found that:

“… a marked pattern of lower support for pro-liberty views among immigrants as compared to US-born residents. These differences were generally statistically significant and sizeable, with a few scattered exceptions. With increasing proportions of the US population being foreign-born, low support for libertarian values by foreign-born residents means that the political prospects of libertarian values in the US are likely to diminish over time.”

He also found that, when Americans were offered a binary choice between smaller or larger government, an expansion of government was favoured by only 27% of Whites, but by 55% of Asians, 64% of Blacks, and 73% of Hispanics.

Obviously there are whites who love big government, and non-whites who don't. But the Dems have banked hard on the proposition that small government views aren’t evenly distributed across the world’s ethnic groups. They might turn out to be wrong about that. But if they’re right, their victory on demographics will overwhelm their opponents' victories on other matters.

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I agree that Republicans believed more Cubans in Florida would make it a red state. And remember in 2000 Republicans wanted Elian Gonzalez to remain with his kidnappers instead of his father as an extremely cynical gambit to turn out Cubans to vote for Bush.

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Between the end of WW2 and the passing of the 1980 Refugee Act, the majority of refugees accepted by the USA were fleeing Communism; whether in Eastern Europe, the USSR, China, Vietnam, Cambodia or - yes - Cuba. Their bad experiences with Communism tended to turn them into right wing Republican voters. It was the desire to change this anti-Democrat demographic bias which inspired Edward Kennedy to sponsor the 1980 Act. Since 1989, the number of refugees fleeing Communism has declined sharply, for obvious reasons.

It’s true that the USA’s 2.4 million Cuban Americans have exercised an outsize influence on US-Cuban relations, considering their relatively small numbers (they’re currently 7% of Florida’s population). For comparison, California’s Hispanic population rose from being around 10% of the population in the 1960s to around 40% today. This seems to have been a major factor in turning it from a state which regularly elected Republicans (e.g. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan) to a solidly Democratic state.

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Richard, you always seem to have a take that alienates you from absolutely everyone. It's as if you have no self-preservation instinct at all, and no sacred cows to boot.

This is why I like you, and why your takes on politics are much closer to reality than almost anyone else's.

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Right is weak against race based stuff b/c a lot of the arguments around criticizing Dem policies require an explanation for why blacks lag behind in X area and many on the right are scared to even mumble culture let alone genetics. This taboo is older than the current culture war. The LGBT/grooming stuff I think it was just out of touch but political machine is in action against it now.

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In my case I don't think fear is an issue. I'm independent. It's more a Schopenhaurian question of why take my time interacting with this person like I would talk to a very young child who I knew was not going to comprehend or even really listen to my remarks.

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I'm waiting for Rufio and Hanania to initiate a sweeping away of the Maoists. Then discussion might be possible again.

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I think the failure to replicate successes on guns and abortion on questions of race and sex is because reform on the latter issues requires bulldozing things that are sacred cows among many more-or-less apolitical moderates and conservatives, in particular landmark civil rights laws that would have to be at least partially repealed. Doing this is a bit like trying to reform sex offender laws so 18 year olds who slept with 16 year olds aren't treated like pedophiles. Most people would agree it's reasonable if you described it to them, but when someone tries to pass the law and his opponent tars him as pro-pedophile, many of those people won't even bother to look into it enough to find out if it's true, and will vote on their visceral reaction, and that's probably enough to make even a perfectly reasonable reform politically dangerous. Civil rights laws are somewhat like that. They enjoy a degree of celebration across party lines that Roe. V. Wade and gun restrictions never did.

That may not justify a 'new politics,' whatever that means. It may just mean that race and sex issues are more likelt hopeless than other areas. I suspect the reason conservatives have focussed so much on LGBT issues is because they don't have the same historical 'baggage.' The very idea of transphobia is so new that there is much less of a visceral reaction to being considered a 'transphobe' compared to be considered a racist.

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“Why so angry?” You do touch on it. The sensation of displacement and dispossession that traditional Americans are feeling becomes anger because many /most have been cowed into ignoring or repressing what’s going on in front of their noses. Not conserving the nation they’re meant to conserve is the biggest fail of Conservatism Inc.

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I think most anger stems from stupidity and ignorance, doesn't it?

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As an anti-woke Socialist, i am completely fucked

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Correct. But unlike the rest of us, you asked for this.

Maybe attempt to undo a small part of the harm you caused before you die.

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Before I die? OMG, do you know something I don't??

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No, the ‘economic left’ is way worse. Even cultural problems - like the massive rise in single parenthood- are the result of leftist economic policies than social policies. Social democracy tends to cause deterioration and of traditional institutions and norms.

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Yes he did. He voted for this.

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Everybody else knew he would be a puppet. He always has been. Excuse failure. Take responsibility for your poor decisions and do better next time.

And the next time you find yourself taking any politician's (Dem or GOP) election presentations at face value, please slap yourself silly until you clue back in. Politics attracts the biggest liars and ego-maniacs in a society. Watch what they actually do - and ignore absolutely everything they say.

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When conservatives "win" it's often because the Left overplays their hand, not because the right is effective in pushing their agenda.

One of most destructive developments over the past 50 years has been the adoption by a large segment of the population of the "blank slate" mindset. When we incorrectly assume that all groups have equal interests and abilities, and then we observe unequal outcomes, we assume that the society must be systemically biased (racist, sexist). This fallacy has led to contempt for the country (and the West in general) among large swaths of the population who see us as deeply flawed. The young, many of whom have grown up in their parent's basement surfing the Web and absorbing Leftist nonsense instead of going outside and experiencing the real world, are particularly susceptible to this delusion. This sorry state of affairs effectively prepared the ground for wokism, which now defines the zeitgeist.

Coming back to my original point, If we are to pull out of this tailspin, it will be because the woke zealots self destruct, not because conservatives have a winning game plan.

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How was that different to the 19th century or first half of the 20th when communists were easily found throughout western institutions, to the extent that penetration by them of the intelligence agencies meant to defeat them was a very real threat?

Wokeness is the same thing the majority have always been battling, just in different clothes. At least there isn't a huge dictatorship bent on taking over the world via military power or funding violent revolutions and converting it all to wokeness. Unless the USA goes that way of course ;)

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We could fight the commies because it was clear what the battle was about. If you believe in the lie of the blank slate, then wokism makes perfect sense (disparate outcomes --> systemic racism), and it's hard to convince people to abandon it, let alone fight it. Wokism will only end when people accept the truth about innate group differences.

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Communism is also based on the blank slate idea, and (classical) communism is hardly relevant anymore in the west, it's been a fringe position my entire adult life. Unfortunately what killed communism was the decay and collapse of the USSR. Hopefully things won't get that bad for blank slate theory to be knocked on the head a second time.

There's no deep reason why disparate outcomes must originate in innate group differences by the way. That's still collectivist thinking. Disparate outcomes are mostly to be found in the decisions and thoughts of the individual.

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How much of this idea’s recent prominence is Curtis Yarvin’s fault? “Cthulhu always swims left”, “You can only lose the culture war”, etc?

The most famous piece of writing I have personally read which espouses this idea was Michael Anton’s “Flight 93 Election”. I suspect, given what I have read about his associations with Yarvin, that he might have been influenced by him.

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Mar 29, 2023·edited Mar 29, 2023

this article is just a big wet dream. the white hating communists control the corporations all schools all alphabet govt agencies media movies tv sports cops all public services newspapers . gun owners biggest cowards and most heavily armed in world history do and did nothing. they cant even stand up to their wives. the right worships jews and blacks and all they really are about is israel. when players in NFL were kneeling they swore never to watch a game again that didnt last a few months. last 2 years broke all attendance and tv viewership records

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This is very poor analysis. The cultural issues are by far more important than tax policy. The fact of the matter is that our culture is collapsing with church attendance collapsing, teen depression skyrocketing, child abuse and mutilation becoming common, and crime skyrocketing. Educational attainment has fallen behind many Western countries, universities are corrupt hotbeds of an insane ideology, the media is totally corrupt and actively suppresses truth and advances lies with the collaboration of the deep state and big tech. The DOJ is being weaponized against honest patriotic americans. Local DA's are persecuting americans who defend themselves or purchase firearms. To claim that conservatives have "won" on any issue is really a big lie.

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I think the main reason that Republicans have done nothing on welfare is that it is overwhelmingly popular even among supposedly conservative Republicans.

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A lot of “welfare” is actually in the Farm Bill and so it is subsidies for farmers. So that’s why Republicans don’t support reparations to descendants of American slaves because getting people out of poverty would result in them eating better food which would be bad for Big Corn. So the biggest factor for a population’s Covid death rate all things being equal is % below poverty level as poverty makes Americans unhealthy and reduces life expectancy.

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deletedMar 28, 2023·edited Mar 28, 2023
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Trump gave $10 billion to retired coal miners in West Virginia because it reduced poverty while injecting dollars into their depressed communities. I actually advocated $1 trillion in reparations instead of the 2021 stimulus and looks like it would have been the far superior helicopter drop than what we did.

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The idea that federal diversity training and the like has led to wokeness seems naive, considering a) private sector companies are doing this on their own b) we have decent evidence diversity training is counterproductive. I suspect that if conservatives want to own popular culture - or at least be competitive - it’ll require some sort of major change.

I kinda suspect that democrats just have to suck it up and deal with political institutions that discriminate against them (and the meantime should get the ones they control - cough big cities cough - in order) and republicans will have to suck it up and deal with cultural institutions that discriminate against them. To their credit, most Dems seem to do that somewhat well (notice the flaccidity of the DC and especially PR statehood pushes). Republicans… less so.

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Diversity training doesn't lead to woke, child indoctrination in schools does.

Everybody knows this. The DEI trainings are just the same game applied to adults, but doesn't work nearly as well on adults (because adults can easily just see the racism and hate inherent in DEI).

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