Pseudo-Reactionaries for Drag Queens

Richard Spencer is back, and he has a bone to pick with the Right because we are supposedly spending too much time worrying about exposing children to drag queens. A few days ago, the former self-proclaimed leader of the defunct Alt-Right wrote on his Substack about a Drag Queen Story Hour protest in Wadsworth, Ohio that got, well, heated. In fairness, some Feds did show up. Hollywood Nazis were out in full force, complete with a certain symbol associated with an extinct interwar German nationalist movement, as well as face/neck tattoos while chanting “pedophiles get the rope.” While it goes without saying that I do not approve of such tactics and optics, the protests against Drag Queen Story Hour go well beyond Feds, informants, and the occasional sincere, if mentally ill, walking indictment. It includes not only the serious elements of the Dissident Right, but also normie conservatives, particularly parents and grandparents worried about their children and grandchildren.

But Spencer does not bother to do that, of course. Instead, he calls such protests “repugnant” and dismisses the whole concept of protesting Drag Queen Story Hour, viewing it as fundamentally an unimportant issue. This is why, thankfully, no one in the earnest factions of the Dissident Right takes anything Spencer does or says seriously. Any healthy society will do what it can to protect its children, because these societies understand that if they lose their children, they have no future. There is a reason why the Christian America of the 1950s considered abortion (infanticide) to be a serious crime. Additionally, this is why corrupting the morality of children was considered a great evil in Victorian Britain. Conversely, this is also why the unserious, decadent, and spiritually sick America of 2023 considers abortion as a “positive good.” And, if you do not end up murdering your own child in the womb, then Drag Queen Story Hour is great family entertainment. That Spencer cannot understand this reveals a critical flaw in his brand of race-reductionist nationalism.

I am not denying the importance of race. I am not a civic nationalist. However, race is also not the “be all and end all” of identity and a nation. Other factors, namely culture, are fundamental, too. But Spencer goes beyond merely having a traditional attitude towards race, rather he reduces everything to race. This is why he cannot comprehend the vast differences between White people (for example, believing the Germans, Poles, and Russians are all “one nation,” more or less). The horrors the Poles have suffered under the Germans and Russians indicate that we cannot take this claim seriously. Culture matters, and healthy cultures do not allow transvestites to read to children in the hopes of sexually molesting them. Because Spencer only advocates for race, he cannot see the threat that Drag Queen Story Hour poses to our children. The drag queens are mostly White, right? That means their interests align with redpilled White Southerners! Let’s all be White together! Spencer’s attitude toward groomers reading to children is simply the natural end point to his approval of homosexuality during his Alt-Right heyday – the infamous Tweet about the “last stand of implicit White identity.”

Spencer goes on to semi-apologize for his actions during his Alt-Right reign, namely for his interactions with “bad actors, angry young men, and the mentally ill.” And while he takes responsibility for his past actions, his writing shows that he does not realize what he did to a generation of young White men. As much as I dislike Spencer, I will give him this much – he’s articulate, well put together, charismatic, had a quality education, and comes from a wealthy family. Spencer, due to some of his personal qualities as well as his professional and familial connections, has more or less survived the fallout from the Alt-Right’s collapse, mostly by rebranding himself as “reformed” now. But others, those young men who were not as articulate, well put together, charismatic, and did not have the advantages of education and family, have not been so lucky. They have had their lives ruined. What happened to the Alt-Right will impact them for the rest of their lives. They will miss out on jobs and promotions because cowardly companies will not hire a “racist,” possibly sentencing them to a life of poverty. They have lost family and friends as a result of this fallout. Some have gone to prison. At least one has taken his own life. Rightwing nationalists will be under constant surveillance for at least a generation. The entire ordeal is a tragic tale, and the fact that Spencer does not comprehend that speaks volumes about his character. Instead, Spencer would rather blanketly condemn people protesting something that would have been laughed off as an evangelical scare tactic a decade ago.

Spencer ends his screed reminiscing about how the Trump 2016 campaign offered to end the Culture War in favor of a nationalist/populist revolt against the elite and building something new. I remember that, by then I had moved on from the Left/Right coalition to end the corporate welfare/warfare state, I recall working on a similar project during the Ron Paul era. I vigorously supported decentralization, I saw it as a way to keep the peace between Southerners and Vermonters while we worked to dismantle a corporate system that sent us off to war. Whatever one may say of that strategy in a vacuum, it fell apart when the Left declared war on us. Ending home rule was not enough, every vestige of Southern identity had to be destroyed. Homosexual marriage was not enough, Christians must be sued for not participating in it. The legalization of infanticide was not enough, it must be celebrated as the best thing since sliced bread. And drag queens being allowed to perform for adults was not enough, children had to be corrupted, too. I could go on and on. The Left escalated almost every single culturally issue, and this made the Trump 2016 promise of ending the Culture War impossible.

If Spencer cared more about culture, he would understand this.

Harmonica