How The Dissident Right Went Mainstream

My new book tells the story

The wait is finally over.

Whitepill: The Online Right and the Making of Trump’s America is officially available to order through the Passage Press store. It will be available next month on Amazon and other fine sellers. If you want to read it now, buy it through Passage.

The book explains how Alt Right ideas went mainstream and took over the conservative movement. It no longer makes sense to speak of a “Dissident Right” when its ideas are spread by the White House and the most popular conservative commentators.

This argument is controversial. Right-wing critics allege that conservatism and the GOP are the same as ever. The only change is that the Online Right got “tricked” into thinking they may have made a difference. Dissidents can only overcome this treachery by… voting Democrat and moving into the woods… or something. While the grand alternative to normal politics remains shaky at best, the conclusion is that everything that’s happened over the last ten years has been a waste. The American Right is the same as it ever was.

That’sa ridiculous assumption. Conservatism has completely transformed since I got involved in politics 13 years ago. In 2013, conservatives thought the future of the party lay with amnesty. It was controversial to even oppose illegal immigration, much less legal immigration. There was no debate over Israel; you had to support “our greatest ally” or face being purged. There was no tolerance for talk of anti-white racism or demographic replacement. Ronald Reagan was treated as a god that all Republicans must model themselves after. The big thinkers of the time imagined the Right becoming more diverse, more tolerant, more wonky, and less interested in cultural matters. It would be like Paul Ryan, not like the average Tea Partier.

A lot has changed since then. Pretty much every conservative influencer–from Tucker Carlson to Matt Walsh–delves into topics once limited to the Alt Right. Conservative Twitter has been supplanted by the Online Right, and its concerns on immigration, national identity, and foreign policy now animate internet discourse. These ideas aren’t just restricted to talking heads. They pervade social media platforms through memes and short-form clips. If you’re on the internet today, you will regularly encounter right-wing ideas. That wasn’t the case 15 years ago. It took a lot of effort to find out horrific crimes against whites and the follies of immigration policy. One had to go into forbidden corners of the internet to learn about this. Now you can just follow Elon Musk on X.

Not everything is “Alt Right” though. The Republican Party establishment still has its old priorities and many of its lawmakers deserve our skepticism. People like John Thune would love to return the party to the days of Paul Ryan. So would many Fox News personalities and talk radio hosts.

So yes, it’s not a complete victory for the Online Right. Posters are not in absolute control.

But Rome wasn’t built in a day. And things are dramatically different than they were in the past. One can see this looking at the conservative movement and how Republicans wish to demonstrate their right-wing bona fides.

While the GOP still has Thune types in powerful positions, the conservative movement has transformed. Thirteen years ago, the Heritage Foundation fired Jason Richwine for writing about racial differences in his Harvard dissertation and for contributing to AlternativeRight dot com. Today, it defends Tucker Carlson and celebrates Chronicles magazine. In 2013, the average young conservative activist was a libertarian (except on foreign policy) and was repulsed by identitarian thoughts. The average young conservative activist is a nationalist who’s fully aware of the memes. The Federalist Society, College Republicans, Turning Point USA, the Trump administration, and Capitol Hill offices are filled with right-wingers. This is the next generation of conservatism–and they’re not libertarians or neocons.

The conservative media space is also dramatically different. The commentators that audiences turn to are no longer Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. The biggest commentators are those engaged in Online Right content and memes. Even influencers who built up careers as standard conservatives–such as Stephen Crowder and Michael Knowles–have shifted with the times. It’s how the Great Replacement, Israel skepticism, and awareness of racial crime data pervade within the space. More and more tune into independent content creators who are free to speak their minds and discuss subjects Fox News wouldn’t touch. Their reach goes far beyond rabid consumers of conservative media. Short clips of RW influencers regularly go viral on TikTok, X, and Reels, introducing hundreds of thousands of people to ideas they would’ve never heard of a decade ago.

Conservative media of a decade ago would have not paid attention to the murders of Austin Metcalf or Iryna Zartuska. These outlets would’ve refused to cover the plight of white South Africans. And they would’ve been hesitant to demand restrictions on legal immigration. Now even Fox News covers these topics. It’s a different world today.

While many Republican politicians are still stuck in the old paradigm, others have adapted to the times. This is evident when they want to demonstrate they are super conservative. In the past, Republican politicians wishing to show they were more conservative than their peers would make maximalist demands about abortion, gun rights, or the size of government. They would proclaim they want every federal agency cut or giving AR-15s to babies to stop abortions.

Today, they talk about immigration. When Rep. Andy Ogles called to repeal the Hart-Celler Act, he was joined by a number of Republicans wanting to bolster their national reputation. One of them was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who argued the bill that opened America’s borders to the third world put American citizens last. Along with the governor, Ogles’s bill is backed by 15 other House Republicans and one senator.

This is just one example. Brandon Gill, Tommy Tuberville, and many other prominent lawmakers talk about this subject frequently. They also address anti-white racism, a topic once forbidden in respectable conservatism. Gill says that the cornerstone of the modern Democratic Party is anti-white racism. That’s a line that would’ve got you mocked and even purged within the pre-Trump Right. Now it’s part of the mainstream.

This isn’t even accounting for all of the president’s comments on immigration, Somali fraudsters, and white genocide in South Africa.

It’s common to dismiss this as all rhetoric. But that fails to account for how the admin turned this rhetoric into action. Only white Afrikaners are allowed in as refugees now. Legal immigration has experienced its most dramatic cuts in several years due to administration policy. A few Republicans still look to pass some form of amnesty, but this is no longer greeted as the path of the future. It’s now seen by the majority as subversion and has little chance of acceptance on the modern Right. We’re no longer living in the days when conservative commentators and presidential hopefuls would urge for the party to reward illegal aliens. They know in our time it’s better for their popularity to resolutely oppose immigration–both legal and illegal.

The transformation of conservatism is why I’m whitepilled about the future. No matter what happens in the upcoming elections, the Right will be more focused on the identity issues in the years to come. There’s no going back to the past. There’s no hope for the Mike Pences to take power once more. It’s a conservatism forever changed by the Alt Right.

This is hard for some to accept. One reason is because the mainstream Right isn’t fully BASED to the tastes of internet posters. Another reason is that many struggle to accept that they are no longer dissidents, at least within conservatism. It’s hard to come to terms with your views becoming wildly accepted. It’s similar to fans of niche music subgenres cringing when their favorite bands become popular. They prefer it remained a small subculture. While the popularization of many Redpills has resulted in increased levels of cringe and insanity, that’s a growing pain of success. These ideas aren’t meant to just be bandied about on obscure forums. They’re meant to change the world, and that’s only possible if they become popular.

How did this all come about? You’ll have to read Whitepill to find out.

Scott’s new book, “Whitepill: The Online Right and the Making of Trump’s America,” is now available. Order your copy today.