Factions of the Rightosphere - Introduction

Introduction to series.

As an absolute autist who is obsessed with semantical precision and categorisation, I am going to have a shot at categorising the factions of the ‘Third New Right’ and ‘Dissident Right’, both of which, in addition to a few other movements, I will collectively term the ‘Rightosphere’.

Alex Kaschuta (paywalled), N.S Lyons, and Keith Woods have done this already, giving their observations as to the different tendencies, as have Woke outlets like Salon, Discourse Magazine, and the UnPopulist. But I feel I have a fresh perspective that I would like to share.

As a short summary, whilst both the ‘Third New Right’ and the ‘Dissident Right’ are responses to mainstream conservatism’s powerlessness in the face of Wokeism, the Third New Right is more institutionalist, and believes that the current liberal democratic structures can be reformed, inspired by the example of Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Meanwhile, the Dissident Right is more explicitly anti-institutionalist, and wants to replace liberal democracy with a more authoritarian system, though they differ as to what it should be replaced with and how to get there.

I see the movements as very much linked, with the ‘post to policy’ phenomenon a recognition that conservative elites are engaging with online Dissident Right content. Chris Rufo and the Claremont Institute have been in extensive communication with the Dissident Right, bringing people like ‘Bronze Age Pervert’ to mainstream conservative audiences. Outlets like IM1776 and American Mind play a role as a bridge between the Third New Right and Dissident Right.

There are some other movements I will discuss here, parts of the ‘Rightosphere’, that I wouldn’t call either Third New Right or Dissident Right, but their own thing. I do not define them as ‘Dissident Right’ because that is mostly used for offshoots from Neoreactionary thinkers like Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land, who similarly emphasise Elite Theory. Even Bronze Age Pervert, who’s focus is quite different to the Neoreactionaries, became famous through Yarvin, linking him to the Dissident Right movement.

However, there also exist tendencies such as the Groypers, the Manosphere, and the remnants of the 2010s Alt-Right, that last of which I will call the ‘Neo-Alt Right’. These have different emphases and origins, with not much overlap in terms of their circles with the the bulk of the Dissident Right (though they claim the term as their own), hence my drawing the distinction.

Who Won’t Be Included?

To be a part of the Rightosphere, you must agree with the following:

‘Wokeism (definition here) is more than just a passing fad. It is not an innocent misunderstanding of ‘true liberalism’ by immature college students or something that can be debated away. It is thoroughly embedded within every institution in the Anglosphere, showing that there is something deeply and fundamentally wrong with politics and society as it stands. Woke activists will not be persuaded, as they are ideological fanatics for whom cancel culture has worked. Therefore, radical action is required to either fight them politically, or build parallel institutions and wait for their hegemony to collapse of its own contradictions.’

There are a couple of groups that people may think should be mentioned.

But the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW), Gender Critical, and MAGA movements won’t be included. I will explain why for each.

Intellectual Dark Web

The IDW is represented by people like James Lindsey, Helen Pluckrose, Brett Weinstein, Sam Harris, Bari Weiss, Konstantin Kisin, and organisations like ‘Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism’ (FAIR) and ‘Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’ (FIRE). Some figures within the IDW-label, like Jordan Peterson, are nominally on the right. However, they are all still fundamentally liberals; they believe that institutions subscribing to extreme transgenderism and Critical Race Theory can be engaged with through open debate, and a milder form of liberalism (often described as ‘90s liberalism’, but I would go further and say Obama-era liberalism) can be restored simply by persuading misguided Woke activists.

But this group will always swing back towards the left whenever there are tendencies that threaten to go further than Obama-liberalism. For example, FIRE, and even Jordan Peterson, have attacked Chris Rufo’s higher education reforms, seeing ‘free speech’ and ‘anti-cancel culture’ as goods in and of themselves, and having no deeper analysis of cultural hegemony and the impossibility of completely neutral institutions. The fact that the pendulum never swung against Woke like they said it would, with the anti-SJW movement completely failing, crushed by big tech censorship and Gen Z getting ever more Woke, discredited this tendency in the eyes of many.

Gender Critical Movement

The Gender Critical Movement, also known as the TERFs (Tran-Exclusionary Radical Feminists), are a diverse range of people, predominantly women. Some are Woke on every other issue, with the only thing uniting them with the Right being mild criticism of transgender ideology when it conflicts with women’s rights. A notable representative here is J.K Rowling, who is in no way part of the ‘right’, and the fact that she is often seen as such only proves MacIntyre’s ‘Neocon Cycle’.

A friend of mine, who is a TERF, recently informed me about the ‘TERF Wars’. On one side of this divide are the more Woke-inclined members of the movement such as J.K Rowling and Kathleen Stock, who still believe in using preferred pronouns as a ‘courtesy’ and who really are only concerned with single-sex spaces, ‘sex-based rights’, and child transition. On the other side, represented by people like Meghan Murphy, Posie Parker, and the publication Reduxx, are those that believe that the transgenderist manipulation of language, of which ‘pronouns’ are an extremely prominent example, are the core means of how the ideology projects its power over society. My friend is definitely in the latter camp.

However, even the hardline TERFs base their opposition to transgenderism more on a general hatred of ‘patriarchy’, and utilise the same methods of critical theory to that purpose. They are good on the one issue of transgenderism, a very important one, but not much else.

Some, like Mary Harrington and Louise Perry, started as TERFs but became part of the Rightosphere. However, pure TERFism is fundamentally a culturally left-wing ideology, and their correct stances on transgenderism do not merit inclusion in and of themselves, as they are built on very different reasoning.

Final Plea for Common Sense

The IDWs and the TERFs play a role similar to that played by ‘Father Gapon’ in the 1905 Russian Revolution; pleading to the establishment to sort out its ugliest aspects through its own logic and framing, that being the divinity of the Tsar in early 20th century Russia, and Civil Rights left-liberalism in the 2010s Anglosphere. However, the waves of big tech censorship and ever greater radicalisation of Wokeism in society exposed their mild pleas for common sense as totally insufficient to deal with a powerful and ruthless enemy. There have been too many ‘Bloody Sundays’ for these factions to have any credibility left.

MAGA

The last notable absence from this series is MAGA. I am not including it because it is not an ideology, but simply a personality cult around Donald Trump. Many of Trump’s most fanatical supporters I would classify as belonging to the ‘conspiracy theorist’ faction, particularly QAnon followers. Some are more intellectual, but the more well-educated Trump activists tend to see Trump more as a vehicle for their own ideology rather than have a religious devotion to the man himself; most probably pretend to believe in the full version of the ‘Big Lie’ as a political manoeuvre, like J.D Vance.

The Series

Anyway, I hope that you enjoy this new series. I originally intended to write it in one article, but given that there are 21 factions, I want to devote sufficient attention to each one, which will involve multiple articles.

Stay tuned!

Click here for the first entry, on the Postliberal faction.