Matt Walsh's Cruelty is the Right's New Strategy in the Culture War.

Having lost on every cultural issue, Conservatives are trying good old-fashioned bullying.

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If you’re fortunate enough to not know who Matt Walsh is, I apologize for being the one to introduce him to you. But as he is the frontman for Conservatism’s last-ditch attempt to win the culture war, it’s necessary to understand the key role Walsh plays in the increasingly Fascists American Right.

An employee of Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire, Matt Walsh rose to prominence in Conservative circles with his 2022 film What is a Woman? As the title implies, it was an attempt to “disprove” the notion that someone can alter their gender from the one they are assigned at birth. And though he focuses on the anti-trans agenda, Walsh fights every cultural battle, from abortion to gay rights, as well as everything else that keeps National Review readers up at night.

And though Walsh is far from the first Conservative to approach social issues with an escalated degree of inhumanity, he stands above other Rightist pundits in his weaponization of targetted cruelty. Typically, when Conservatives argue against something like gay marriage, they coat their policies in soft language and politically correct terms in an attempt to cushion the vitriol of their belief. For example, they don’t like to say they’re “against marriage equality” but rather are “for traditional marriage,” which sounds a lot nicer when said at Christmas parties. 

But not Walsh. 

Instead, Walsh makes no attempt at niceties to court the swayable to his socially-conservative beliefs. He simply employs overtly insulting and abusive rhetoric — often targeted at specific individuals — to obscure the fact he has neither evidence nor morality for his claims that transgenderism is a threat to society. And while this may sound like an exclusively Leftist critique of Walsh, it is not.

Last week Walsh came under fire from fellow Conservatives after he posted a video mocking the appearance of a transgender person. The video was reminiscent of the most heinous middle-school bullying, empowered by the multi-billion dollar machine of Conservative media.

I’m not going to post his video, but I’m sure you can find it.

As for the lack of supporting evidence for his anti-trans politics, here’s a clip of Walsh on Joe Rogan’s podcast claiming that “millions” of children have received hormone blockers for gender-affirming care. Rogan’s producer immediately fact-checks him, showing that there were actually less than 5,000 cases of adolescents on puberty blockers in the last five years.

To give Walsh the best-faith interpretation of his statement (not that he deserves it), I’ll assume he meant “there were 2 million children on puberty blockers,” which is the smallest number able to satisfy his assumption of “millions.” As there were actually fewer than 5,000 cases, that means the best-case scenario for Walsh is he is uninformed by a factor of 400.

Side note: You have to be REALLY wrong to get fact-checked on Joe Rogan. I literally don’t think it’s ever happened before.

Remember, Walsh just made an entire movie about trans people. He is the Right’s ostensible “trans expert.” Not knowing the basic facts about his most devoted cause shows Walsh doesn’t care about a fact-based debate, only bullying trans people and inciting his minoritarian audience to fervor and violence.

Walsh Exists Because Conservatives Are Losing the Culture War