With many on the purported “Right” openly embracing Leftist tacics, theories, and frameworks, we are seeing not the opposition to the “long march through the institutions” but a continuation of said march, abet with different boots doing the marching. As James Lindsay explains.
Let’s get some perspective. The Woke Right is not a reaction to the Woke Left; it is the CONTINUATION of the Woke Left into conservative institutions.
The Long March Through the Institutions effectively hit its Leftist limit by maybe 2022 or so at the latest. Leftists had taken or destroyed every institution they actually could take or destroy by then, more or less. And there was massive pushback from conservative institutions that weren’t just based but getting organized quickly and effectively.
The Long March Through the Institutions had to continue INTO conservative institutions (mostly faith and family, into any remaining honest “Alt Media,” together with the more solid wings of the Republican Party and the sectors of the right-wing think tank world that repelled it).
The Long March Through the Institutions has to march into EVERY institution, not just ones that are easy pickings for Leftist intellectuals and bureaucrat types, plus kids.
What does the Long March Through the Institutions do? One of two things. It runs entryist programming to get inside established institutions and to turn them to the revolutionary cause or, when it cannot do this, destroys them. The mechanism is internal infection plus external pressure almost every time.
So the Long March Through the Institutions ran as far as it could run into Left-susceptible institutions by 2022 at the latest, and it was mostly repelled by Right-standing institutions. But the Long March Through the Institutions had to continue into EVERY institution to truly transform society. There can be no remaining solid resistance.
Further:
Of course, the Long March Through the Institutions tried Left-coded infiltration and destruction of Right-standing institutions, probably most obviously and notably the Southern Baptist Convention and some of the other major Protestant national denominations. MLK50, Resolution 9 (SBC-2019), and much else (seminary appointments, podcasts, leadership, TGC, T4G from the mid-2000s to almost 2022, e.g.). But ultimately it failed. It was blocked. (Catholicism, Anglicanism, etc., fared a lot more poorly in resisting Woke Left infiltration, as we all saw and can still see.)
To continue the Long March Through the Institutions after 2022 required something different: finding a way to turn Right-standing institutions into Right-susceptible ones and to provide them with a mutated Woke virus that could infect their institutions.
The goal didn’t change: get inside the institution and take over or, if that’s impossible, destroy it with a combination of internal rot and external pressure.
Woke Right is that mutated infection, and it shows up as Wokeness cloaked in the language of faith and patriotism (“Christian Nationalism,” “Christ is King,” “America First”) in order to infiltrate Right-susceptible institutions. It speaks to grievance, frustration, love of country, and hope. It plays upon the deep distrust and suspicion these institutions have for “official” narratives and manipulates their distrust, dislike, and disdain for Leftism of all stripes.
That is, it shows up as Reaction.
But it isn’t even Reaction. It’s simulated Reaction. It’s hyperreal Reaction. It’s Reaction in pastiche. It’s the Reaction a Leftist would formulate in a lab somewhere and unleash on conservatives.
That is, Woke Right is not actually Reaction at all (dumb as Reaction is). It is THE ACTIVE CONTINUATION OF WOKE LEFT IN RIGHT-WING CLOTHING. It was always the next thing once the Left’s march through institutions and identity categories hit a wall.
It runs the same playbooks using many of the same people, for example. It has the same formula: black identity politics, meet white identity politics; female identity politics, meet male identity politics; gay identity politics, meet straight identity politics; atheist identity politics, meet Christian identity politics (but we’ll call it all “Jewish”).
It was always going to be the next move when either or both of these conditions were met:
1) Leftist advances went as far as they could into Left-susceptible institutions;
2) Real and effective pushback arose in authentic conservative spaces.
The goal of Woke Right is to take the Long March Through the Institutions into Right-susceptible institutions to infect them and make them useless in the real fight against the Left, if not causes for the Left’s resurgence (this strategy is called “l/acc,” Left Accelerationism). Whatever it can’t capture, it will destroy.
The bonus for this phase of the Long March Through the (Conservative) Institutions is that taking over an institution is destroying it. If you turn an institution openly racist, fascist, Nazi, etc., that is, if you “f-ck and impregnate it with Groyperism,” for one example, you ultimately ruin it. It might have a short and wild run for a little while, but it won’t just be destroyed sooner than people think; it will be DESTROYED FOREVER in abominable and lasting shame.
Heritage Foundation is at the knife’s edge of being completely cooked now after almost 50 years. TPUSA teeters on the brink after everything Charlie Kirk poured into building it. College Republicans, which will all bleed over into the Republican Party by name association, has a very narrow window remaining to save its reputation.
And when this all gets seen properly in the public, and the public turns on this rot for real, as it will, those institutions will not have a comeback arc. There’s no comeback arc available to those views once society sobers up and the psyop calms down or moves on.
I could (and should) go on, but I won’t. You need to understand what’s actually happening here. You need to understand that “Woke Right” and “Christian Nationalism” and all this garbage is just the next part of the plan to ruin us that was deployed specifically because we were succeeding, and it was always set to be deployed this way when we got there.
If you think I “changed” or “went crazy” back around 2022 or so, it’s because that’s when I started to understand this simple fact. They were creating the “Christian Nationalist” movement and reinvigorating the Alt Right to take the Long March Through the Institutions to the Right and destroy us all from within because we were going to win.
Perhaps it’s less of a “long march” than a “short bus drive”.
