The Decline of ‘Low Information’ Conservatism

This article is going viral Advice to the Alt-Right

Vox Day and Zman represent an insurgency against the ‘low information’ brand of conservatism that is characteristic of NRO, Drudge, Townhall, and elsewhere. Smart conservatives, in particular, are tired of hyper-partisanship and low-information punditry that regurgitates the same old predictable talking points, platitudes, and homilies…We, the ‘alt right’ and reactionaries, seek more evolved discourse. Intelligent conservatism is not about reflexively opposing everything the ‘left’ does, but rather about looking at issues from the context of preserving the greatness and richness of civilization and culture. For example, when Obama in his last days in office ended the ‘wet foot, dry foot’ policy for Cubans, the alt-right conceded that Obama was right, even if by happenstance, but the NRO-conservatives had to drag their feet as to why this was a bad move by Obama, because they are programmed to oppose everything Obama does. Even if they oppose citizenship, because Obama signed the bill, they had to rationalize why it was bad anyway. This fixed mindset of ideological conformity, which is no different than for the SJW-left, is why NRO-brand conservatism is dying, or at least for the 10% of conservatives who have an IQ above 110 and are capable of looking at issues a greater depth than whether said politician has a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ after their name. I’m optimistic the in time this percentage will rise–not due to rising IQ scores–but rather due to increased awareness of how mainstream conservatism has failed.

Another factor is how online journalism has evolved in a post-2013 era, in which emotive partisan articles that ‘push’ the reader have ceded to ‘shared narratives’ and intellectual and introspective long-form content that merely tries to nudge the reader. Vox Day’s articles have many shared narrative themes, such as distrust of elites–a distrust shared by both the ‘left’ and the ‘right’. You don’t need to be alt-right to not like George Soros; many liberals also don’t like him.

Second, many smart conservatives, related to ‘intellectualism culture‘, [1] are weary of reductionist or seductive narratives that are backed more by wishful thinking than science or empirical evidence, such as the belief that the ‘free market can fix everything’, that ‘pulling oneself by one’s bootstraps’ is a panacea for poverty, or that ‘strong families will cure all social ills’, ignoring the role of biology in all of these instances. Telling the large swathes of the unemployed, who don’t have genius-level IQs and who lost their jobs to outsourcing or automation, to ‘learn how to code’ is like telling penguins to ‘flap harder’. Tens of thousands of years ago, height was useful for picking tall stuff off trees. Now brains are more important. Biological determinism is real in our competitive post-2008 economy. IQ is becoming a sorting mechanism for who succeeds or fails.

[1] Intellectualism culture is a social theory I devised that describes how smart people interact with each other and understand the world. One of its tenets is that for smart people, intellectual bonds are stronger than ideological ones.