The Producerism of Oliver Anthony

When Oliver Anthony came out of nowhere with his song “Rich Men North of Richmond,” I was intrigued and decided I would write an article on it. Here was a young Southern man that clearly had an appreciation for classic country music and understood the trials, tribulations, and frustrations of the working-class in the late-stage United States. Still, I decided to hold off on an article for several reasons. First and foremost, I expected him to get attention for about a week before crashing down, but that did not happen. Instead, he had another big viral hit with “I Want to Go Home.” I also expected him to cuck, and cuck hard. And while he has said a few things I don’t agree with, so far, he has done nothing to suggest that he’s not a well-meaning guy who just needs a little push in the right direction. I am looking forward to his ideological journey. And finally, I wanted to observe the reaction to the song for a little while, especially from the Left.

The reaction from the Left was as expected. Anthony was called “a dumb hick” and, right on cue, a “racist.” Seeing how the modern Left reacts to anything they dislike, there was little surprise that this was their response. Insulting Southerners and screaming “racism” is the calling card of an NPC and it really does not warrant much more discussion. There is one bit of criticism I did want to address, though: the Left’s attacks on the supposed discrepancy between Anthony going after “rich men” and targeting welfare recipients. The specific line from the song is – “If you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds… Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds.”

The reaction from the Left ranged from fairly sane, simply calling the lyrics “questionable,” to declaring that the song could not be taken seriously because Anthony went after the poor harder than he did the rich. This, of course, ignores that: 1) he brought up the specter of Jeffrey Epstein and 2) he does have sympathy for the homeless. It’s the lazy that Anthony appears to take umbrage with. But what unites these leftists’ objections is their inability to critique both the wealthy and welfare abusers. By taking this line, the Left is revealing that they fundamentally do not understand how the vast majority of people in the United States understand class conflict. And because of this lack of understanding, the Dissident Right has a powerful tool to gain new converts.

To what extent Americans (I’m using this term for the sake of simplicity, there is no American “nation”) think about class conflict, something that must be understood is that they’re not Marxists. They do not view the poor masses as oppressed by the rich. In addition, they are not Objectivists (as in Ayn Rand) – believing the creative wealthy class is held back by ignorant mob. Both of these views are overrepresented in the media because Marxist ideology dominates academia, while Objectivist thinking controls the business world, the two pillars of the ruling regime. The vast majority of Americans reject both views. Rather, they have another understanding of class struggle, a third position, if you will. This holds that the middle-class – i.e., mid-level corporate professionals, skilled blue-collar workers, farmers, small businessmen, etc. – are caught in a two-front war against an exploitive elite class that seeks to pauperize them and an underclass that lives off their tax dollars and often victimizes them with criminal behavior.   

This theory, which I term “Producerism” has its most articulate champion in Sam Francis. Francis, years before Trump, correctly predicted that the tension between the conservative base and conservative doner class would eventually have to break. The doner class, in getting its desired deals on trade and immigration, was pushing more and more of the conservative base, which overlapped heavily with the middle-class described above, to the brink. Francis knew that they had nowhere else to go, especially as the Democrats supported the underclass and were increasingly becoming indistinguishable from corporate Republicans on trade and immigration. And, after years of close calls, the breaking point was reached in 2016 with the rise of Donald Trump. Despite all of Trump’s flaws, he does rhetorically embrace the same Producerist mindset that also informs Oliver Anthony and how Americans largely view the world.

This is a case of great luck for the Dissident Right, as Producerism fits in nicely within a rightwing populist framework. The Dissident Right must hammer this home: “We know both the underclass and the elites are a threat to you, we will not ignore one or the other as our opponents do.” By driving this point home, we can show more people that they have, by their nature, already adopted a Dissident Right perspective. From then on out, it is just a matter of filling up the cracks and pointing them in the right direction. That his music has connected with so many people, weeks after he came out of nowhere, demonstrates that Anthony has told them something that they already know to be true but have rarely seen expressed. The Dissident Right has that very same message, one that can critique both the tyrannical elite and the parasitical underclass. And that is the real lesson of Oliver Anthony. Even if he was to chicken out tomorrow and declare his support for Black Lives Matter and publicly avow “Trans women are women,” the forces he tapped into cannot go away.

We must pounce on this, and give his fans a coherent political platform to believe in.

Harmonica