David French: The Lost Boys of the American Right

August 16, 2023 Hunter Wallace Conservatism, Polarization, Politics, Populists 39

Editor’s Note: If you are wondering why I used the image of Anakin Skywalker above, it is because these people tend to be Star Wars nerds and Marvel fans and the idea of destroying them appeals to me.

I saw this bitter salvo from David French when I was on the road at the Amren conference in Tennessee. It struck me as another fitting reminder of where we are at these days like the article in Tablet Mag on the Alt-Right or Michael Lind’s attack on the eugenicons at Compact or the sudden spike in interest in BAP at The Atlantic. Conservative liberalism lost the Millennial Right.

New York Times:

It keeps happening. Since the ascendance of Donald Trump, with depressing regularity, right-wing men have been outed for using the most vile rhetoric. In private chats and sometimes in full view of the public on social media, they’ll engage in blatantly racist, sexist and homophobic speech, flirt with fascist imagery and then often disavow their words and actions the instant they’re caught. …

Terrible stuff. And even more terrible is the realization that I could fill this entire column with other examples of right-wing bigotry, from Christian nationalists, a former Trump speechwriter, a former Daily Caller editor and one of Tucker Carlson’s former top writers. And this is hardly a complete list. The problem is so widespread that Aaron Sibarium, a rising star reporter for The Washington Free Beacon, recently posted, “Whenever I’m on a career advice panel for young conservatives, I tell them to avoid group chats that use the N-word or otherwise blur the line between edgelording and earnest bigotry.”

What is going on? Why are parts of the right — especially the young right — so infested with outright racists and bigots? …

As I survey the right — especially the young, so-called new right — I see a movement in the grip of some rather simple but powerful cultural forces. Hatred, combined with masculine insecurity and cowardice, is herding young right-wing men into outright bigotry and prejudice. Contrary to their self-conception, they’re not strong or tough or courageous. They’re timid sheep in wolves’ clothing, moving exactly where the loudest and most aggressive voices tell them to. …

There was a battle of ideas.

It took place on the internet in the 2000s and 2010s.

It has been over for a long time now and David French’s side lost. They didn’t realize it was happening because they thought parroting conservative orthodoxy instead of defending it from criticism was sufficient to win the day. It was against the rules to engage with people like BAP. You shunned those people and called them racists and that was it. You don’t give them a platform.

In retrospect, we are only beginning to see how the rise of the internet and social media over the past 25 years has changed our culture and the direction of our politics. If you are my age or younger (I am about to turn 43), then you are a native of the internet. You entered young adulthood and made up your views about politics around 9/11 or in the years that followed. Your political views were likely more shaped by what you found on the internet than in print publications or network or cable television.

Think about it.

If you are my age or younger and you are rightwing, you don’t remember the Reagan era of childhood. The Soviet Union collapsed when I was 11-years-old. I experienced the Clinton era as an adolescent. I didn’t begin to think about politics until around Bush v. Gore to 9/11. I was born in late 1980 which makes me one of the very youngest Gen Xers or one of the eldest Millennials. I was using dial up internet in the late 1990s. I can’t ever remember buying or being influenced by a print subscription magazine like National Review which I read online. I made up my mind about politics and my basic values in the 2000s when George W. Bush was president. I was a young adult after 9/11, the War on Terror and the Crash of 2008.

The key thing here is how the internet flattened the political landscape. National Review and The Weekly Standard were officially at the top of the conservative pecking order when W. was president. Conservatism, Inc. had its hierarchy of institutions. Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity were yelling at Boomers on cable television. Rush Limbaugh was on talk radio. It was just as easy though to read American Renaissance, VDARE, Stormfront or later 4chan though as it was the mainstream websites. Ideas also traveled horizontally through discussions on forums, blogs, podcasts and later social media instead of vertically from the top down through mainstream channels. Debate went on outside of official channels. The clamp down on the internet only really began after the liberal establishment panicked when Hillary lost to Trump. By then, it was way too late to influence Millennials. A 20-year-old in 2018 was born in 1998.

Over the past 20 years, careerists like David French – people who have been carefully vetted by Con Inc. gatekeepers and who have received their kosher card – have risen through the official channels. He made a name for himself writing at National Review in the Obama era. Like many conservative pundits who move up in status by leapfrogging to the mainstream media, French later snagged his dream job writing as an opinion columnist for The Atlantic and the New York Times. And yet, the funny thing is that David French’s political influence has shrunk as he has been given ever larger platforms. He got his position because he knew whose ass to kiss, not because what he is saying is resonating on the Right.

All sorts of bright people were cast out of the conservative synagogue over the years for rocking the boat: Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis, Peter Brimelow, Jared Taylor, Joe Sobran, John Derbyshire, Steve Sailer. After 2000, the internet leveled the playing field and made their content as accessible as that put out by the careerists who got the positions and who were in good standing. I can’t remember who said it, but someone on Twitter recently observed that Conservatism, Inc. in the 2000s and 2010s had too many gatekeepers and not enough gates at a time when the internet had eliminated their power. The debates that Conservatism, Inc. refused to have simply went underground and happened anyway.

It is important to remember that these debates which shaped the political values and views of a whole generation of rightwing men took place in the context of the twin debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Crash of 2008, the suffocating grip of political correctness and later wokeness in the universities in the 2000s and 2010s, soaring Third World immigration, the long term consequences of feminism and deindustrialization playing out and myriad other things like the tribal drumbeat of anti-Whiteism which manifested in movements like Black Lives Matter and the dismal failures of the Civil Rights Movement. Lots of people noticed that over seventy years of antiracism, social engineering and trillions of dollars in wealth redistribution failed to eliminate racial gaps. We’re not supposed to ever notice the failure of liberal policies, especially on race and sex, but people do notice and draw conclusions.

The term “Lost Boys” which has been bandied about by these people – David French, Tom Nichols, Hans Fiene, etc – refers to all the legions of angry young men out there whose career paths were blocked by gatekeepers and who never found their way into institutions. They either never landed the comfortable establishment gigs in center-right institutions or were later doxxed like Scott Greer or excommunicated like Nate Hochman when their real views were exposed. Some like Richard Hanania or BAP participated in the formative debates of the early Alt-Right for years under anonymous pseudonyms.

Conservative elites didn’t want to address or deal with the real problems which the rising generation was diagnosing and discussing in the 2000s and 2010s. Their response was to stick their heads in their sand and to purge anyone who made too much noise. Those problems never went away. Those concerns never went away. The people who were angry about those problems, especially those who were cast out of the mainstream or injured by cancel culture or whatever it was, did not go away either. It took Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election to shatter the consensus and the response of many of these people like French was either denial or throwing a tantrum. Those who took a different path and began to seriously address these issues and give voice to the discontent like Tucker Carlson after 2016 have soared.

The tide is rising now. The first generation whose political views were decisively shaped by the free for all of the early internet is hitting middle age in the 2020s. Everyone before that grew up in a bygone world where you could only come across the truth about taboo topics like race in an obscure newsletter, print magazine or flier. It took a lot more work. This is happening as the oldest generations who were shaped by early television in the 1950s are departing. Today, only elderly people can remember the Civil Rights Movement. The “Lost Boys” are becoming middle aged men with their own children now. Millennials won’t hit the peak of their political influence until the 2030s and 2040s. We still have a ways to go.

No one is changing their views. Most people made up their minds a long time ago in their twenties. The “underground politics” of the 2000s and 2010s – race, sex, gender, culture, political correctness, immigration, war, demographic change, globalization, the merits of liberal democracy and free market capitalism and so on – everything that was once taboo to talk about and outside of the conservative liberal consensus is now bursting into mainstream politics. Meanwhile, the views of politics of people like David French have diminished into a rump that comprises at most about 15% of the Republican Party.

I know lots of Millennial writers who chose precarity and influence over material comfort and having no influence in young adulthood. In the long run, I think it will pay off for them.

Note: The Weekly Standard went out of business in 2018. Liz Cheney was driven out of politics in 2022. Pat Buchanan’s foreign policy views have triumphed over Tom Nichols.

37 Comments

  1. I checked the original JewYork article, also commet section.

    Not a single idea, only screaming hatred. This is good. They know that they losing badly and they have no idea how to turn it around. Like Nazis in the 1945.

  2. “In retrospect, we are only beginning to see how the rise of the internet and social media over the past 25 years has changed our culture and the direction of our politics.”

    Yes, the Internet cut out the Middleman and, hence, gave us the ability to talk to each other, as our granddaddies and great-granddaddies were doing on each other’s porches, before the advent of TV and radio.

    Surprisingly, The New York Times, once masterly for it’s stealthy and adept steering of White Gentiles, has just given up and taken to whining.

    That’s a a good sign.

    They’re out of ideas

    The only question, to my mind, is whether we are just going to go forth on our Laurels, content to see our enemies mourn, or are we going to sow the next generation’s ideas?

  4. “combined with masculine insecurity and cowardice”

    That lying POS, asserting the very opposite of the truth, so kosher.
    These are young men finding strength and courage to think for themselves and break the constraints of media indoctrination.

    “masculine insecurity”
    Some catty bitch gave him that phrase, “that’s how I intimidate the cucks i meet”.

    He’s more faggot than the queer rollerskaters of South Beach in their pink boy shorts.

    (HW, good analysis and commentary 🙂

  6. “Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis, Peter Brimelow, Jared Taylor, Joe Sobran, John Derbyshire, Steve Sailer.”

    Please, Brad. I don’t know that any of the above are or were on welfare. Buchanan listed his net worth as $40 Million, 40 years ago. LOL. Brimlow and Taylor both seem to be doing OK. Sobran and Francis are long dead. Derbyshire and Sailer may be the poor relations?

  8. Working class and lower middle class white men are the true “Lost Boys’ of today’s America and are the primary victims of affirmative action and public school integration. Public school racial integration destroyed quality public education and the so-called ‘lost boys” , were those whose parents could not afford private schools ,so that they were left uneducated. Also they were deprived of chances to ascend the social ladder by affirmative action , which assigned all opportunities for class advancement to nonwhites- particularly blacks. With no opportunities to rise regardless of intelligence their aspirations were dashed and most now embrace their fate as members of the blue collar “dirty fingernails” vocations- people who, no matter how smart will never be considered for leadership positions in our society.-no senators or congressman from this cohort. This is why we must press relentlessly to truly dismantle affirmative action, and lobby for white identity politics.- these are the keys to improving the lot of whites in America.

    • you can put upper middle and lower upper in that group too. frankly, the old american version of class is bonkers and based on narrow wage categories, conjured up by the old liberal elite to justify their system by social mobility during the Cold War, a sleight of hand.

    • “victims of affirmative action and public school integration”

      First thing:

      Young men need to be educated that they live in a jewed society, filled with snares and booby traps, drugs, alcohol, gambling, porn, toxic feminism, a government that hates them. That will help them avoid the common traps that ruin so many lives.
      Then to work on building themselves and associating with healthy like minded WHITES and networking.

  9. There is more to life than money, they are so so right. The children of the lie have much to fear, from a generation who has forsaken money and values truth above all.

  10. David french, him and the Lincolnites, they offer the lost boys nothing, they won’t even acknowledge them, except too criticize, insult and threaten them, the lost boy’s, just need some encouragement and direction from real, honest leadership, french and company, are just as naive, useless, corrupt, political whores, even worse than the democrats…………..

  11. “’masculine insecurity”
    Some catty bitch gave him that phrase”

    Ah ha, French’s wife is a ghostwriter, i now know the source.

  12. “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” —African Proverb (ironic…)

    Timothy McVeigh and Theodore Kaczynski will be worshiped soon enough, provided they aren’t already.

  13. That’s an excellent summary, Hunter.

    Ideas also traveled horizontally through discussions on forums, blogs, podcasts and later social media instead of vertically from the top down through mainstream channels. Debate went on outside of official channels.

    All this would happen before the internet, of course, but at a much slower pace. And when all you had was face to face communication, you had to remember what people said and all sorts of details could be easily lost or neglected. The internet streamlined and supercharged the entire process.

    Long-time campaigners have often lamented that the internet wasn’t performing for pro-whites as much as they’d hoped. Probably, though, the process just took a lot longer than they thought. As you say, all that chatter does seem to have made a difference.

    I can remember in the early 2000s what I’d now recognize as WN or pro-white views popping up in “free discussion” parts of forums that had nothing to do with politics. I didn’t pay much attention to them, usually dismissing them as “racist bullshit,” but every now and then they’d say something that, whether I liked it or not, sounded reasonable. Looking back, I suppose this played a part in prepping me for taking the issue more seriously.

    No one is changing their views. Most people made up their minds a long time ago in their twenties.

    It’s not always about “changing minds.” Often it’s just a matter of disinhibiting people, so that they allow themselves to acknowledge the importance of what they had long “sensed” (rather than understood).

  14. People of all stripes know nothing of actual human history but I can always get a thorough analysis on the Skywalker family line. I’m surprised they don’t give PHD’s for this shit in clownworld yet.

  15. Rino-saur de-nutted cuck David Fwench looks at the grim post-whigger ZOGtard future

    Rino-saur de-nutted cuck drones like David Fwench really have less of a future than them “lost whigger” boys of today. Cheeto-Jesus the ZOG-Emperor Drumpf has far more political influence than old cut-dog eunuch-cucks like David Fwench and the years ahead shall be hard not only for gliberal whigger cuck drones but theys’ negro pets and jew masters.

    Bronze Age Pervert was one of the Balkanoid mamzers who made his apprenticeship over at phorafags/feebs. BAP is one of my followers on TwatterX, mines me for anti-ZOGling whigger ass-clown invective. David Fwench and the rest of the RINO-saur cucks can only watch the likes of BAP with atavistic dread, like a walnut-brained stegosaurus seeing scurrying possums out to eat its lunch and eggs.

    The future shall coontain plenty of these BAP-style barbarians with theys’ shock troops being the “lost whiggers turned feral” desperately seeking either Lord Humungous amongst the ruins of the post-ZOG wasteland or wanting to join the SS legions of Chancellor Hitler to be paid off in either heads or pussy.

    Hail Victory !!!

    Pastor Martin Lindstedt
    Church of Jesus Christ Christian/Aryan Nations of Missouri

  17. Second chuckle of the day:

    https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/08/16/leonard-bernsteins-family-defends-bradley-cooper-amid-jewface-controversy/

    A prosthetic nose. Omg that’s hilarious. I would never have watched the movie because… its about a jew and I cant spare any fux at this point. I might have to now…

    HW! Will you do a film review?

    Does anybody know if they stuck a rubber nose on cillian murphy for that other recent jew worship movie, oppenheimer?

    Man thats funny.

  18. They are Langley conservatives. Bill Buckley rose to deputy director. He was seated next to the director (Casey) during the Reagan years. They are part of the Mockingbird Media. So is Alon Musk.

  21. I remember seeing David French at CPAC.He had a Black child on his shoulders and was showing him off proudly. He and his wife have adopted many African children.

  22. Ain’t nobody got time for that, the scene at the cantina is hopping!
    It’s all Lizzo on the jukebox with free Bud Light and Zima for all and I just updated my walk across the room and fart report on the TwatFaceGram.
    I wish I knew who these people are. (not really)
    Si se puede!

    • Sooooo, Tucker has found a colored guy to be the savior, a genuine, real life “conservative”. He and all the other wogs should be deported, this is not their country. He should take that faker Nimrata from SC with him too.

      Tucker is still thinking it’s the 1980’s, Ronald Reagan color blind conservatism, Jack Kemp enterprise zones etc. Those were the people who passed amnesty in 1986, started the de-industrialization of the economy ruining millions of families, pushed financialization which concentrated even more power in NYC and a few other places and encouraged demographic replacement to drive down wages. Tucker has spoken out against those things but still slobbers over the colored folks when he isn’t demanding an end to the cover-up of the UFO thing.

      Maybe Tucker can get the three foot tall, green, UFO aliens to magically scoop up the wogs and return them back to their own countries.

  25. All the conservative Inc establishments all say shit that I’ve heard before. They’re beating a dead horse. Clay Travis is becoming a popular new face of conservatism Inc and their talking points….and I really like him….but I’ve stopped listening to him, as he says nothing that I haven’t heard before.

    Dissident right content, such as the content that can be found here, I have found myself in agreement with. However, I’ve also been horrified and/or enraged by it. But it’s usually never boring and is often thought-provoking.

    I can’t say the same thing about typical conservative inc. drivel.

  26. Great article, one of your best. In my twenties I attended Firing Line episode tapings and YAF conferences. I got to meet Buckley but also Joe Sobran. I cherish the Sobran meeting so much more today.
    I was an active conservative when Spencer, Milo, etal, were still wearing short pants.
    I cannot label myself as conservative anymore but also cannot label myself as alt-right.
    Find Christ and speak against evil is my label.

  28. “…What is going on? Why are parts of the right — especially the young right — so infested with outright racists and bigots? …”

    There’s an extremely simple answer. Where we are headed has two sides or paths to follow. They are following the one we do not want to go down. It has nothing to do with race, other than the fact that those not of our race are overwhelmingly following a path opposed to our interest.

  29. We are seeing this a lot, this little word play with the word bigotry. Bigotry is hatred without reason. It is unjustified and irrational hate. But if you got a reason, if someone or some group or some kinds of people did you wrong, and you are aggrieved, then you are fully justified in hating them up to the time they see the wrong committed against you, apologise and try to make repair. Are blacks capable of seeing the harm done to whites in the name of fairness through DEI and can they admit to it? I would like to know. Are they just like us or not?

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