Self-Mogged: How Conservatism Stupidified, Triggered, and Destroyed Itself
Ben Shapiro, Christopher Rufo, National Review, and Republican establishment face the blowback of building a movement on bigoted, conspiratorial outrage culture.
Last week, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to save Donald Trump from himself by invalidating most of the President’s sweeping tariffs. While the ruling is great news for Trump, as it will end his extremely unpopular economic policy, he’s too senile and strong-headed to realize he was given a gift: a way out of his self-destructive policy without having to surrender. Instead of taking the win, he punched the gift horse straight in the mouth. The President launched into a primetime tirade, insulting the justices who ruled against him, including his appointees, Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, as well as Chief Justice John Roberts, who has arguably done more to help Trump than anyone else alive. Trump also pledged to circumvent the ruling, which the Justices won’t like. That may be a tough pill they have to swallow, though. As you might remember, this is the same Court that granted Donald Trump immunity for “official acts” without specifying what those acts are. So, the Supreme Court, which has protected Trump at every turn, is now tasked with stopping the monster it previously ruled cannot be stopped. On the other hand, the Supreme Court has been nothing but an obsequious ally to Trump, shocking court watchers by overwhelmingly siding with the president via the shadow docket. And now, he’s risked turning them against him by calling them “slimeballs,” “fools,” and “an embarrassment to their families.” A President butting heads with the Supreme Court is a tale as old as America. But what makes this clash so unique is that this president and this Supreme Court are the crown jewels of the conservative movement. One, a president who fulfilled Republican strategist Grover Norquist’s wish for a president with “enough working digits to hold a pen,” and the other, the anti-democratic rule over the American political system long desired by the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation. With complete control of the legislature, the conservative movement got everything it could ever want. And now, the girls are fighting.
Conservatism achieved its wildest dreams. But now, it is quickly being devoured by the very strategy of political enstupidification that conservatives used to achieve their success. While Trump v. The Supreme Court (future case name, I’d wager) is the highest and most visible display of Republican-aligned troll culture coming back to bite itself, it is not an isolated incident. The hyper-online right-wing online conservative ecosystem is being forced to reckon with the anti-intellectualism, trolling, bigotry, and all-around mind-baffling stupidity that it didn’t just tolerate, but actively promoted. I’ve heard this described as the "MAGA civil war.” But I think comparing it to the two-sided American Civil War is reductive. A better analogy is the English Civil War, in which ever-shifting alliances, fragmented factions, and conflict-defining personal slights created an ever-changing, always chaotic cycle of backstabbing and frontstabbing that solved nothing and left many combatants confused about who they were fighting and for what reason, depending on the day. Not only am I basking in the schadenfreude of watching figures such as Ben Shapiro, J.D. Vance, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and Christopher Rufo tear each other to shreds, but the never-ending snake-eating-snake chain provides good insight into where the right is weak, and how it can be defeated — if they don’t defeat themselves first.
There is only one place to start this story: the active dumpster fire that is Turning Point U.S.A.
Ever since TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk was struck by a bullet, his once-mighty organization has been in shambles. There’s no denying Charlie-era TPUSA was powerful. By enticing young conservatives with conspiracy theories (“The great replacement theory is reality”), racism (“The Civil Rights Act was a mistake”), and the internet edgelordism that fuels modern conservatism (“The death penalty should be televised to children”), Kirk turned his campus group into the youth outreach wing of the GOP. And while older establishment conservatives told themselves the kids were really excited about tax cuts, small government, and personal responsibility, the truth is they were there for the show — owning the libs, not the private ownership of industry, is the core mission of the modern right. (PROOF) But when Kirk died, the cat was let out of the bag. Immediately, conservatives looked for the only answers they’d been told to accept: shadowy conspiracy theories, a minority group to blame, and just straight-up vengeance. Against who? That doesn't really matter.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox called the shooter a “leftist ideologue,” which was later disproven. Some elements of the online right blamed Israel, a theory that still lives despite the frustrations of Zionist conservatives. Most of the conservative movement exploited the death, particularly to punish anyone who said Kirk’s name without also saying he was the Most Special Boy. Jimmy Kimmel was temporarily cancelled for criticizing Kirk, and over six hundred people were punished or fired as the right-wing mob called workplaces and doxed social media users in a horrific pursuit to ruin their lives. But when the truth came out that Kirk’s alleged killer was a White Mormon kid from a gun-loving family, conservative media stopped pushing the conspiratorial narratives. As the shooting put conservatives in a weird spot over gun control (Kirk had said the 2nd Amendment was worth the cost of shootings like the one that killed him), they quietly tried to move on. After all, this was an opportunity! A leading conservative podcaster was gone, and his audience was up for grabs. There’s money to be made! Kirk’s widow was hucking merch at his memorial. (Below is leaked audio of Erika celebrating merch sales.) Why should anyone else not get in on this cash grab? But the conspiracy-hungry TPUSA followers weren’t ready to move on. They’d been promised a scalp, and by God, they were going to get one.
While the more professional elements of rightist media wanted to mourn Charlie and turn their attention to the upcoming midterms, Candace Owens recognized that the conservative online world didn’t want to move on so fast. Trained in the ways of Republican trollism and the outrage economy by Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro, Owens is bat-shit insane, incredibly anti-semitic, and racist. Before she grew her own conspiracy-minded audience, Candace was the go-to for White conservative outlets who wanted a Black woman to say the racist things they would get in trouble for, such as, “White men today are treated like Black men under segregation.” She still does all that, but “Who killed Charlie?” is her money maker, and she’s not closing the spicket anytime soon. On her podcast, she floats theories that can't be proven or disproven, enabling her to throw out a new one each week and keep her audience coming back for more, more, and more. It reminds me of the X-Files. Every week, there’s a different villain that could be responsible for Charlie’s death. So far, she’s accused everyone from Israeli intelligence to French President Emanuel Macron (who is suing Owens for saying his wife is trans) to “Egyptian planes,” to Erika Kirk herself. While Erika Kirk and the TPUSA leadership have tried to put a lid on these theories, they forgot what business they’re in. Owens’ claims, which have been echoed by Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, are extremely popular with conservative audiences, including TPUSA’s own staff. Earlier this month, a longtime TPUSA staffer, Aubrey Laitsch, confirmed she was let go from the organization as part of a mass firing of employees who thought that there was “something more to Charlie Kirk’s death.” In typical conservative fashion, Laitsch bemoaned how employers could fire workers for “no reason,” which is the result of at-will labor employment that the conservative movement has forced onto the country.
Unfortunately for the conservatives who thought TPUSA would be a reliable vehicle to deliver youth votes for Republicans, the online conspiracy theorizing and hate mongering that they used to build the GOP youth machine is too much to control. It quite literally is a drug. Conservatives pumped billions into gaming, or outright purchasing, social media algorithms with quick-hit, controversial video content that enraged, thrilled, and attracted viewers. But what triggered the libs in 2016 doesn’t anymore. So, the right-wing media members need to go further and further. Now, those who liked Kirk’s nonsensical rants about The Great Replacement Theory are turning to Owens for even more explicitly anti-Semitic conspiracies, and those who liked watching libs freak out when Kirk said Black pilots were DEI hires are enjoying Nick Fuentes screaming the N word over and over. As Owens is tearing the conservative youth movement apart at the seams, Republican-aligned allies are freaking out. Conservative podcaster and 39-year-old-who-still-wears-a-beanie Tim Pool said this about Owens’ destruction:
“If the Republicans lose in the midterms, I believe that Candace Owens is wholly responsible. She is one of the biggest podcasts on the right, [and she is] doing everything to go to war with the organization that helped get Trump elected. Turning Point specifically was going out and registering people to vote. Without Charlie, it’s in trouble.
He also called her this. Classy.
One person who has taken particular anger at Owens is her former boss, The Daily Wire founder, Ben Shapiro. Back in December, Shapiro used his speech at TPUSA’s America Fest to attack Owens and Tucker Carlson as “frauds and grifters.” There is no doubt that Candace Owens is a grifter. But so is Ben Shapiro, who employed and enabled Owens to become what she is. During his anti-Candace speech, Shapiro accused Owens of “vomiting hideous and conspiratorial nonsense into the public square for years.” Which is interesting, because he only fired Owens from The Daily Wire the year prior.
The subtext of the conservative media civil war is that Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and Megyn Kelly, with their fingers on the pulse of the internet, have seen which way the audiences are heading and began to criticize Israel. These people are as clear grifters as it gets, and they don’t give a single shit about Palestinians. They are simply criticizing Israel because it allows them to seem “America First” while stoking the bigotry conservative audiences desire. Owens has always been anti-semitic, but that was never a problem for Ben Shapiro until she began challenging him on Israel. Below is a video from the 2019 launch of TPUSA Britain, in which Candace Owens says, “the only problem with Hitler was he invaded other countries,” implying the Holocaust was A-Okay as long as it stayed within German borders. This was so shocking to the Tory activists that a few of them quit the TPUSA project that very day. (Notice Charlier Kirk standing next to Owens, saying nothing.)
Two years later, Ben Shapiro hired Hitler-praising Owens to The Daily Wire. Only when she began expanding her hatred of Jews to the Zionist state last year did Shapiro fire her. Now, he’s forced to deal with the monster he created. Earlier this week, Shapiro posted a nine-minute video entitled “Candace Owens is evil,” lambasting Owens about the release of her “investigation” into Erika Kirk, Bride of Charlie.
Ben Shapiro plays a particular role in the crashing train that is the conservative project, as he is both responsible for creating modern right-wing outrage culture and a victim of its hatred. His backstory is so absurd, I’m scared you won’t believe it.
