One of the most important things to know, these days, if you are on or in any way affiliated with the new right, is this: Nothing is ever what it looks like.
Thus, when long-term Trump adviser and consigliere Steve Bannon gives a Nazi (sorry, Roman) salute at the US’s most important right-wing get-together, you have to be smart enough to know that he didn’t really mean it. Taking things at face value makes you some kind of NPC moron who doesn’t get the joke.
This was roughly the same line that was used by defenders of Elon Musk after he appeared to use a similar gesture in the aftermath of the Trump inauguration. It was used too to defend one of the western right’s worst morons, Father Calvin Robinson, after he copy-catted Musk and lost his job over it. After a Republican official in Pennsylvania took to tiktok to thump her chest and extend her left arm (she got the salute wrong) she too first said that her video was meant to “stir the pot” and then later, after her forced resignation, said that the video had been “mischaracterised”.
Apparently it wasn’t pot-stirring after all, and you are a fool if you took her at face value.
The basic rule here as articulate by those who defend this conduct needs to be understood. It goes something like this: “If you are offended by any of this, you need to understand that it is only trolling. The point of making these salutes is not – we are to believe – to honour the third reich but to mock and offend those pathetic losers out there on the left who want to cancel everyone for small harmless things like extended right arms. Put that in your cancel culture pipe and smoke it, wokesters.”
Of course this is circular: We don’t really mean it, but we also want to make the point that it offends you and there’s nothing you can do about it, because Free Speech, baby!
But since you don’t really mean it, who are you offending?
If the point is to be offensive to make a point, then the offence surely has to be genuine and intended otherwise then your point is accidental?
You can’t say on the one hand that these salutes are just trolling the loser left, and then screech that anyone who says they are genuine doesn’t understand what is going on. Either you’re seeking to offend on purpose, or you are accidentally offending. Which is it?
It’s just rank cowardice: The people doing this want the thrill of being offensive, but none of the consequences for being offensive. They want to offend the lefty wusses, but they also want to insist that the lefty wusses are taking offence over nothing. Elon Musk was just offering his heartfelt best wishes, after all.
This kind of loser doublethink is all the rage now, in the Trumpian era. It is I think the role of the writer to try and clarify the thinking behind it, and understand it.
We should start I think by acknowledging basic reality: It is eminently possible that in the case of Mr. Musk, his explanation that the roman salute was accidental should at least be considered. One cannot say that about Mr. Bannon, Fr. Robinson, the ridiculous woman in Pennsylvania, or any of the myriad other copycats. If you believe that any of them did it by accident, I have a bridge to sell you.
If they did it on purpose, and they assuredly did, then this is just institutionalised loserdom, which both lacks the courage of its own convictions and fails to make any point worth making.
If Steve Bannon, to cite the most prominent example here, has a point to make about the third reich then he should make it. He does benefit from free speech, which is protected in his country by the first amendment to the US Constitution. If he desires to say that there were admirable things about the German regime under Herr Hitler, then he should have the courage of his convictions to say so.
But of course he knows that to do so would forfeit his position. The Conservative Political Action Conference is sufficiently far gone that it will tolerate a Roman Salute under the guise of a joke or trolling, but even the Trumpiest of the Trumpy right in the United States could and would have nothing more to do with him were he to take to a stage and start with the “Hitler sure built some fine autobahn” schtick. Were he to go down that road, then Donald Trump, to his credit, would have nothing more to do with him, and puff would go Steve’s entire basis for making money. The only way the racket is sustainable is if the actual loser nazis on the right believe you are serious, but nobody else does.
Ironically, the point about “cancel culture” that is supposedly being made by this nonsense is actually the opposite one to the point that is actually being made: That there are still some taboos that even these hucksters do not dare to violate. The only way that they can signal their inherent sympathy for nazi-ism, and protect their own careers from people on their own side of the fence, is to dress it up as a joke.
This doublethink is everywhere on the new right: Its most prominent expression is in the absurd and often repeated mantra that one should take Donald Trump seriously but not literally. Think about what that means: That nothing the man says should be taken to be literally true, and that it is up to you, the observer, to find the deeper meaning in it. It is ideological leadership reduced to Brahmin philosophy. It is Government by fortune cookie. It turns all of us into palm readers, supposed to parse the signals for indications of what is going on in the Prophet’s revered mind by studying the entrails of his pronouncements. It is the kind of thing that used to happen in Soviet Russia, to the extent that it was given a formal name: Kremlinology. The art of deducing what the dear leader means by studying the entrails of bizarre statements. In that respect Mr. Trump is often closer to Kim Jong Un, in the eyes of his most devoted supporters, than he is to any other world leader.
The result is that an entire industry of bloviating interpreters has emerged: Blue-tick armed tweeters whose job it is to tell you what The Donald really means, or what Steve Bannon was really trying to say with his Roman salute, or how a person called Q on the internet has secretly revealed that Hillary Clinton is in jail. It is all in the same family of the absurd. They didn’t really mean it, and it is just the left deliberately misrepresenting them. Also: How cool is this?
A successful political movement that desires to be around for the long term needs to police itself from the snake-oil sellers and the hucksters that will try to infest it. The new right is singularly failing to do so. That may not matter now, when it is riding high in the west. In time, it will matter. And in time, many of you who disagree with this article will find yourselves telling others that you never agreed with a lot of the nonsense to begin with, even as you defend it now.