the ultra-right-wing movement which has currently seized hold of U.S. politics and discourse and has been driving it relentlessly rightward since 1980 and the illegitimate Presidency of Ronald Reagan has a paradoxical character that's made it very difficult to talk about in a concise fashion. That's partly through deliberate strategems: right-wing figures make themselves deliberately as blurry as possible, constantly changing their political labels and finding new "theories" and "philosophies" behind which to disguise their own beliefs, which are apt to be in constant ferment and unsettled. The pose is always that these people are still undecided somehow, still available for persuasion, and the difficulty with liberal and leftist ideas (so they say) is that they're never persuasive.

but in a genuine sense the entire movement is rudderless, bereft of unifying ideas and therefore reliant for cohesion on mutual hatreds rather than positive beliefs. every person in the coalition thinks of themselves as a lonely truth-teller, the one person who has been granted true political vision, and therefore they don't work well in groups. the Internet has been a godsend to their sort of politics, because it furnishes a medium that's both very broad and available almost anywhere in the country with the right equipment, but also isolating and tailored to the needs of people who want all their socializing to happen at a long distance. each of these persons, when quizzed, can truthfully claim to be part of no organized movement. "Gosh, me?? A 'fascit' or whatever it was you called me? I'm just an independent truth-teller, politically homeless, a rebel against conventions, etc."

there's an element of self-protection in that, of course. claiming to be independent and "heterodox" isn't just self-flattery, it's also safer than belonging to groups and causes. every right-wing influencer of note has probably used the "I'm just an entertainer uwu" excuse at least once. again, the Internet is of immense value here, because it allows for right-wing celebrities to ditch their own fandoms at a moment's notice, claiming that they've merely attracted a rowdy crowd and they're not responsible for them. but also, it's partly genuine. each person in the movement, whether they're relatively big and famous like (say) Charles Murray or just an insignificant admirer with a Twitter account, feels like they ought to be in charge and that their fellow reactionaries, while good and sound fellows on the issues that matter, are in fact hopelessly wrong and heretical about something.

each of them is a potential leader. but each of them is also a FAILED leader—that's important. people sink to this level because they've had their illusions crushed so now they need bigger illusions, grander ones, in order to keep their egos from collapsing. Charles Murray probably still feels, really and truly, like they've been robbed of a Nobel Prize by carping hypocritical liberals. Elon Musk knows deep down inside that all his "success" is fake, almost entirely the work of others, and thus he must pretend he's the restorer of a racially purified Roman Empire or whatever. they have both the grandest possible aspirations and a fearful ignorance of all the skills and abilities that would enable them to carry their aspirations through.

they must, therefore, always look to someone greater. the only way they can feel like leaders themselves is if they've got a bigger leader behind them. even a coward can fight if they think they've got a threat in front of them and a massive wall behind them, preventing them from running away and therefore leaving them no choice but self-defence.

and thus we get a mechanism for self-organization. smaller failed leaders cluster around bigger failed leaders, who are themselves always seeking someone to back them up. the degree to which these persons can obtain some backup—sponsorship for example, the way that murky creditors sponsor Elon Musk and Harlan Crow sponsors Charles Murray—determines how well they can function as temporary or provision leaders, stable enough to gain a crowd of adherents, and of course a large enough crowd of adherents is itself a source of stability. large groups of people, even rowdy mobs with little cohesion, have a tendency to stick together by a sort of human Van der Waals force, a general tendency for human beings to attract each other's company.

and that, I think, is roughly how you get the sort of paradoxical accidental conspiracies that prevail in the right wing. conventional U.S. political journalism hasn't really caught up with the fact that these people and groups are working towards common goals even if they're only loosely organized. money and a rather small collection of mutual concerns keeps them all going in the same direction. is it "conspiracy" in any way that a U.S. prosecutor or judge would reckon conspiracies? honestly...I don't know. I feel like the law is lagging well behind political reality.

~Chara of Pnictogen