I’M BAAAAACK! Though not in the way I anticipated. The TL;DR is that I just bashed out a very passionate piece on my 365 INFANTRY Twitter/X account that is secretly the basis of a much longer video essay. Working on a piece concerning this unending cycle of right-wing do-nothingery in the domain of art/entertainment/culture-building. This isn’t edited, this isn’t the full script, but I think the emotions of it are right for now. Let me know your thoughts in the comments of this one, really looking forward to having a conversation about it.
Essay time with JC, putting the blue check to use. While I keep an explicitly apolitical project, I do tend to float around right-leaning circles as they happen to cater to the brand of old-school pulp and SFF that I dig. But every time this godforsaken conversation happens, it's the exact same & the results are the exact same. Allow me to pitch my two cents on why.
The right is abysmal at the art & entertainment game because the right is incapable of building an actual coalition. Objectively, there is no dearth of talent. Plenty of incredible writers, musicians, game devs & filmmakers are in this space. And while the coffers aren't infinite, there are plenty of investors floating in the ether.
Where the trouble begins is when the two try to meet. Most independents (especially those who didn't have a decade-plus to establish their brand in parts elsewhere), are trying to revive older styles, classic ideals, and more that are spiritually inline with the right's general wants & needs, but at odds with the modern entertainment landmark. Conversely, the new media establishment's knack for being trendy & focusing on ROI means they'll keep up with the zeitgeist, but will end up being little more than the left's opposite number. Disney makes a shitty version of [blank], millions must scream. DEI is a hot-button issue, here comes Daily Wire with a hot-button response. There's a reason why damn-near everyone short of party-liners hated THE NEW NORM. Why does anyone want a right-wing animated version of ALL IN THE FAMILY that's all about how everything is shit and nothing is good anymore? "Relatable" ≠ Good.
One side (indies) can't make cultural change off of work foreign to the masses, and the other side (new media) makes its money off work with zero aspirations and a shelf-life to match. All that matters if that it makes its money back, and inevitably rewards more of its kind, instead of what's needed. Neither is able to hear out the others' case. To be blunt, the indies grinding it out without any true patronage sound like whiners looking for handouts, and the new establishment types look tone-deaf and out-of-touch with the artists and underserved audiences they'll inevitably have to court.
My final straw, however, is this election cycle. I'm a zoomer. I'm being constantly told my generation doesn't have a future, Gen Alpha beneath me is DOA, and I keep seeing pundits all over the right talking about this moment in time as the "end of history." If I'm to be a part of the "conservative counterculture," what's the fucking point of being part of a counterculture that won't live to see another day? What's the point of "building your own platform" if the same kinds of people behind shit like AM I RACIST are the ones blackpilling you out of a country?
On the right's own terms, AM I RACIST is a pyrrhic victory. It legitimizes the Daily Wire and their aims for a media empire in the twilight of Western civilization. All the other artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, game devs who wish to celebrate heroism, adventure, the indominable human spirit left to twist in irradiated wind because boomers & Gen X cons can't stand the idea of matching the left in anything other than rhetoric. They don't dare outspend them, they don't dare cultivate a genuine sense of aesthetics or depth.
This is why I can't consider anything I ever do "right wing art/entertainment." Not even because I don't fit the ideological boxes of the political spectrum, not even because I genuinely welcome all who enjoy my work, regardless of ideology, but because the Right in the West is broken. It is dysfunctional beyond repair. There are a million variants of "dissident right-winger" that will fight amongst themselves, and only break to deal with this tired-ass conversation of mainstream conservatives asking "where's muh good stories/where's muh western art," and then spitting in the face of tens of thousands trying to make something of worth that may line-up with what they espouse, but will "never make it."
My best years as a creator and a man aren't going to be spent trapped in a defeatist ideology that would sooner die fighting itself then tend to any of its external threats. You can blame all the external factors in the world for why you can't back an SFF revival on the right, or why you can't patron a sculptor, but the simple fact remains you're all trapped in a never-ending cycle of chicken v. egg that'll end in a deep fryer and an iron skillet. Not only am I bypassing all this idiocy by giving up on the idea of "conservative/RW art & entertainment," but I am going to overcome all of this out of spite. Because if nothing else, I'll laugh my ass off at the idea of a furry sci-fi magazine outdoing the entire RW media machine. Besides, if you're born to lose, might as well live to win. It's what Lemmy would do.
I'm going to be honest with you. As a 33 yr old guy, who's been involved with the most of the Alphabet soup "Right" groupings since at least post-Gamergate, your post spoke to me at a deep level.
I feel like I lost 5 years of my life due to some flavor of Conservative/Right Wing Negative Reinforcement where they tell you stuff about the inevitable downfall of the West, the Left being some kind of undefeatable monolith, how if we don't do something now then there is no hope for the future blah blah blah and on and on. Stuff gets so depressing that there could be Communist propaganda factories looking at the state of Right-wing "discourse" and deciding to just not do anything, because so much of the Movement™ acts as it's own demoralization machine.
It's shit like this that causes people to go to more extreme places, not that a lot of them were any better, I ended up in some Atomwaffen adjacent online groups AND THE EXACT SAME FUCKING THING was going on there because they think there negative motivation will somehow lead people to radical action as opposed to them just becoming lazy slobs with a nasty case of crab mentality.
Quite literally, the only time things fixed themselves on my part was when I cut off from the Movement™ drivel, became more serious with my faith, committed to making stories and story ideas again, and accepted that I was on a road to nowhere if I continued partaking of the "discourse". Even then, I still feel miffed that I lost those years.
Keep up the good work. You and your buddies make great stories. I know I'm reading them and the good old stuff to help inspire mine.
I'm at the point where I think we should reject the whole "RW/LW art" thing. It's not a real thing. It's a category of the mind that we impose on ourselves for ideological reasons. People will cite the works of Tolkien and Lewis (especially Tolkien) as examples of RW art. But I can guarantee you that they're not thinking of making "RW Art" when they were penning their works.
People can cite how Tolkien was some based and trad right wing guy who really loves the Latin Mass and is pro-Franco and whatever. But there's a reason why most people don't know that, and that's because no one cares. In a sense, these things are irrelevant. I'm not saying that one's personal lives don't matter in his works, but it's something that only culture analysts and nerds like me will pay attention to. As for Lewis? Lol; he was so committed being apolitical that he rejected a knighthood.
And on the other side, I would hear that Star Trek is a "LW Art". Admittedly, I thought this way too. But no, it's not LW Art, it's just art. Obviously it's made by a liberal atheist, so it's going to have some "left wing" stuff into it. Similarly, the works of Tolkien and Lewis or any "based" author you can think of aren't "RW Art", they're just art.