Useful Idiots and Good Authoritarians
Symptoms of creeping illiberalism
I am in the thick of an international move at the moment, so this post will be shorter, looser, and jokier than usual. Soon I will be able to spend more of my time thinking and researching (and therefore posting).
There were a couple stories that stuck out at me this week. First of all, the Department of Justice indictment alleging actors from the Russian state used a network of heterodox/New Right influencers to launder narratives in the West. There was money to be made here, and the covert Russian involvement is a form of foreign interference. But the useful idiots at Tenet Media, who included Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and Lauren Southern, were easy marks. The polarization in the United States, and the right-wing political and media ecosystem’s enormous structural incentives to drive that polarization makes right-wing influencers eager participants in promoting divisive, illiberal ideas.
Drivers include:
The pathological negative partisanship and demonization of “the Left,” which encompasses, amorphously, everything from mainstream Democrats to borderline fictitious communists.
Many right-wing influencers were contrarians first. Career iconoclasm is hard to sustain; most things are generally well-understood and organized. It’s the height of intellectual hubris to think you have identified the flaw in everything, and the habit of reflexive contrarianism leads to conspiracism.
The medium of YouTube is an emotive and entertaining one (rather than a cool and critical one), and demands content. The content churn undercuts quality control and rigor.
Perhaps most critically, there are obviously real illiberal currents on the Right where run-of-the-mill Reaganism and movement conservatism has curdled into something more aligned with out-and-out authoritarians. The ideas Tucker Carlson, for example, wants to promote are not dissimilar to narratives expressly spread by Russian actors to undercut liberal democracy.
In its opposition to liberalism, the populist Right globally makes itself a tool of authoritarians unless it is exceptionally wary. As the drivers above suggest, they have little motivation to be as careful as they need to be.
The second story I want to touch on is closely related. It’s Tucker Carlson’s interview with Darryl Cooper of the Martyr Made podcast. Matthew Walther rightly eviscerates the historiographically illiterate Cooper in Compact. But I think this is Exhibit Two this week of the extent to which the American populist Right and its online cheer squad have demonized progressivism so thoroughly they are pining for culture war prosecuted with jackboots.
Above I said something along the lines of the conservative movement curdling into something more authoritarian. Of course, the temptations were always there and that process of curdling has always gone on. You can see this throughout Jacob Heilbrunn’s snappy exploration of American right-wingers and their fascination with authoritarians. It is primarily the use of force to stand up to, or crush, leftism that ultimately appeals.
You can also see the temptation on an individual level. Being an out-and-out right-wing commissioning editor must be a risky gig. The number of writers who start within the bounds of mainstream conservative though, but wind their way to extremism, or reveal their extremism, or even write all along under pseudonyms, isn’t enormous, but it is real. You have your Olivers, Francises, Derbyshires, Hananias, and Nina Powerses. To pick one example: in 1963, a eminent conservative intellectual, William Couch, sought libertarian donor funding to establish a Center for American Studies. The idea was to revive interest in the authentic conservative American political tradition. The project got derailed by the fact two men associated with it, David L. Hoggan and R. J. Rushdoony were either Nazi sympathizers (Hoggan) or anti-Semites. What changes things today is the scale of the audience these ideas get, and the lack of guardrails or tools available for responsible conservatives to suppress them. What responsible conservatives can do is refute them where they find them.
There has been an uptick in illiberalism - both in the sense of illiberal political regimes, such as Putin’s Russia and to a lesser extent Orban’s Hungary, and support for illiberal ideas or impulses. One minor outcome is the interest in illiberal ideas and figures, some of which had previously been niche historical lacunae. For instance, I enjoyed this dive into Englebert Dollfuss and Austrofascism over at the Bulwark.
Dollfuss is fascinating in his own right, but in contemporary illiberal discourse he is one of the Good Authoritarians. Other Good Authoritarians include Antonio Salazar, to a lesser extent Francisco Franco, and perhaps Pinochet (maybe a cliche choice), or Lee Kuan Yew. A good Good Authoritarian needs to be authoritative, effective, although not too violent. There’s bonus points for obscurity. The point is that proponents of illiberalism need Good Authoritarians as a proof of concept: to justify and alibi authoritarian politics as a genuine pathway to the common good or some other greater goal, not just a self-reproducing mafia state.
Recycling some jokes here, but I think there’s something to be said for knowing an online illiberal’s favorite Good Authoritarian. Here’s what it says about them:
Francisco Franco
Unironically refers to “Weimar America” and “The Late Republic”
“Do you even lift, bro?”
Attends Mass in Latin, is not baptized
Augusto Pinochet
True Misesianism has not been tried
Fantasizes about throwing people helicopters
“Alpha male”
Antonio Salazar
“Have you heard about Distributism?”
Most successful blog post has 36 reads
Plans to read reads Charles Taylor… someday
Soft boi
Engelbert Dollfuss
For when Salazar is too mainstream
“Not all fascists…”
Owns a replica sword
Lee Kuan Yew
Authoritarianism without that churchy stuff
“AI is transforming society and we need to reckon with the impacts.”
Claims to be a “Venture Capitalist”
Replacement level imperial monarch
Has not visited Europe
“Actually, monarchs’ time horizons make them better stewards of states than democrats”
Has logged 10,000 hours playing Paradox Games; is unfulfilled professionally
Viktor Orbán
Has visited Budapest on a junket
“The Left can’t stand a democratic leader turning back progressivism”
They may be Rod Dreher
In personal news:
I am moving to Washington, DC, this week to take up a yearlong post-doctoral fellowship at the Reagan Institute. I’ll be working on a book manuscript and, with luck, research for a second. If you’re in town, get in touch.
Career iconoclasm is indeed hard to sustain in academia. In other organizations, it is a bit easier. Almost every organization is in tension between mission and self-preservation. (Startups are all about mission, however.) Usually, the preservationists win. But they'll tolerate a few well-behaved hippies, who care more about mission.
Yes, I don't mean to dominish contrarianism writ large or suggest everything is fine. But I think it's common to be heteredox in something you know a lot about, and then apply that heuristic in spaces you don't have expertise, to your peril. That's what I meant by career iconoclasm!