Silencing Dissidents
The Right cannot be idle bystanders in the era of “sit down, shut up” politics.
It’s a common trope on the right to make fun of establishment conservatives for pointing out some form of Leftist hypocrisy or double standard on Twitter. We love to laugh while our dim, fluttering luminaries wax long and loud about “how the Left would react if the roles were reversed” like a candle trying to light up a night-dark room.
While the efforts of the chattering class are ultimately fruitless, because the Left’s hypocrisy is the greatest symbol of its power, and while it’s certainly warranted to point that out, the dissident right is taking the wrong approach. Leftist hypocrisy gives them no room to give moral lectures to anyone on any subject, and right-wingers need to be more assertive in making this fact plainly known.
One such example of this complete and utter absence of room to talk is the constant stream of paranoid hyperventilating about the iNsUrReCTiOn on January 6 (which in reality was nothing more than simple trespassing), while every excuse imaginable was made for the riots that tore through Seattle, Portland, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and other major cities last year.
There’s also the avalanche of COVID-related hypocrisy. Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Andrew Cuomo, Gretchen Whitmer, even the Obama’s have all taken part in some elite “rules for thee, not for me” privilege. There’s also the almost-constant flip-flopping, from the “experts,” to The Administration’s CDC Director, to Dr. Fauci, whose continuous stream of double-talk makes me wonder if he doesn’t actually have two faces.
Then there’s the absolutely laughable “MAGA cult” line of thinking that I see on Twitter all the time. It’s one of the most redundant insults hurled at rightists online: “You stupid MAGAts (or come other uncreative slur) why don’t you cry to Dear Leader Trump?” Meanwhile, in reality, a recent Monmouth University poll showed Joe Biden’s approval rating is 93% among Democrats, a number Trump struggled to match, even in favorable polls.
These examples are just the low-hanging fruit. To restate what I said at the top of this post, hypocrisy is the substance of every Leftist policy and rhetorical position. Anyone can point that out. What the dissident Right needs to do is throw it back in their face. The Right needs to become accustomed to just telling the Left to shut up.
“But they will call us mean names and say we’re authoritarian!” Who cares? They’re wrong, and (dare I say it) the actual authoritarians. Stop listening to them. Stop giving their self-indulgent moral preening credence. Tell them to shut up.
We’re in a rhetorical and institutional war where the Left is actively flouting the law to silence dissent. The least right-wingers can do is tell them to put a sock in it on Twitter dot com once in a while.