The Unironic Trump-Yang Voter

It appears that the rise of the #YangGang has rustled the feathers of a lot of conservatives and libertarians in the Trump wing of the Dissident Right.

No one should be surprised by this development because it has been building up to this for quite a while. I argued with Christopher Cantwell about whether or not nationalists should support Trump and the GOP in the 2018 midterms. Matt Heimbach endorsed the Democrats in the midterm elections. Identity Dixie responded in favor of Keeping The Faith in the GOP. I responded to both in Ronnie Raygun Rules Again in which I explained why I was skipping the midterms.

When the GOP was blown out in the 2018 midterms, I wasn’t surprised at all. I had predicted that the GOP would lose the 2018 midterm elections and had penned The Case Against The 2018 Midterms in December 2017. My assessment of the impending GOP blowout was based on the assumption that Democrats were highly energized, #BLEXIT and other fantasies of turning out legions of based blacks and Hispanics to vote for conservatives would fail spectacularly and that the public’s perception of Trump had changed radically under his presidency. Instead of being perceived as a populist or a moderate, which is how he got elected with such an unorthodox coalition in Midwestern battleground states, Donald Trump is now seen as the most conservative president since Ronald Reagan.

This is the crux of the issue:

This is the root of the #YangGang taking off. Trump, following the advice of cucks and Kushner, drifted farther and farther to the lower right (where nobody is) and left a void in the upper left for someone like Yang to come in and appeal to his populist voters. pic.twitter.com/DEFP7HYIvv

— Carrie Pippa??? (@CarriePippaVV) March 9, 2019

There isn’t a conservative-libertarian coalition capable of winning the presidency because there is no constituency for a socially liberal, economically liberal politics in America outside of the Republican donor class. The GOP can only win the presidency by appealing to the vastly more numerous populist and moderate electorate that is socially conservative and economically populist.

For the last 15 years, I have ideologically been in the upper left hand corner of American politics. This is why I hated the George W. Bush presidency. It is why John McCain was so soundly beaten by Barack Obama who appealed to moderates and populists. It is why Barack Obama won a second term by beating Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan. It is why Donald Trump stunned everyone by beating his conservative and libertarian rivals, especially Ted Cruz who ran on True Conservatism, and scrambled the electoral college to win the presidency by taking Pennsylvania and the Upper Midwest.

Angry populists swinging between the GOP and the Democrats has long been a feature of American politics because the key to who wields national power in Washington is the large bloc of voters in the upper left corner who are forced to choose between conservatives (upper right hand corner) and progressives (bottom left hand corner). Donald Trump won those voters by NOT being a caricature of a FOX News conservative. He won them over by pitching himself as a pragmatic businessman and master deal maker with unorthodox positions on immigration, trade, foreign policy, political correctness and entitlements. He talked about “America First” and the devastation caused by opioid epidemic and that resonated with White working class voters who flocked to Trump in record numbers.

But now … where is Trump at this point in his presidency? What is the state of his brand with the disaffected populist nationalist voters who were the KEY to his electoral coalition? I believe this blog will prove highly valuable to future historians and Republican strategists trying to figure out the rise and fall of Donald Trump because it has all been documented here on a daily basis for the past three years. In the last few weeks ago, a broad swath of the movement has caught up to where Occidental Dissent has been for years on Donald Trump, and yes, there is an unironic tinge to it.

I unironically do not like conservative and libertarian economics. In 2015, I was interviewed by Evan Osnos of The New Yorker who wanted to know my take on Donald Trump:

“After years of decline, the League has recently acquired a number of younger members, including Brad Griffin, a thirty-four-year-old who writes an influential blog under the name Hunter Wallace. Short and genial, he wore Top-Siders, khaki shorts, and a polo shirt. As we talked, Griffin’s eyes wandered to his two-year-old son, who was roaming nearby. Griffin told me that he embraced white nationalism after reading Patrick Buchanan’s “Death of the West,” which argued, in Griffin’s words, that “all of the European peoples were dying out, their birthrates were low, and you had mass immigration and multiculturalism.” Griffin once had high hopes for the Tea Party. “They channelled all that rage into electing an impressive number of Republicans in the South, but then all they did was try to cut rich Republicans’ taxes and make life easier for billionaires!” he said. “It was all hijacked, and a classic example of how these right-wing movements emerge, and they’re misdirected into supporting the status quo.”

Griffin had recently told his readers that his opinion of Donald Trump was “soaring.” He sees Trump’s surge as a “hostile takeover of the Republican Party. He’s blowing up their stage-managed dog-and-pony show.” Griffin is repelled by big-money politics, so I asked why he spoke highly of Trump. “He’s a billionaire, but all of these other little candidates are owned by their own little billionaires.” He mentioned Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers. “So I think Trump is independent.”

BuzzFeed called me several times to ask for my opinion of Donald Trump:

“Brad Griffin, who runs the white nationalist blog Occidental Dissent under the pseudonym “Hunter Wallace,” similarly praised Trump.

“In addition to the Trump database, this should help Trump peel off a lot of the Carson/Cruz vote while sending the Left into a new fit of PC rage that will generate free publicity through Iowa,” wrote Griffin.

“That’s great,” Griffin said of Trump’s policy. “We need to stop the damage the U.S. government is already doing to places like Minneapolis–St. Paul and Middle Tennessee with the refugee resettlement program. It was revealed today that ISIS is targeting the refugee program to funnel terrorists into the U.S.” …”

BuzzFeed would always cut out the part of the interview where I told them that I liked Trump because he was financing his own campaign to be independent of GOP donors and that I didn’t like his tax plan. I was as deadly serious about that as I was about his immigration policy.

Politico was the only outlet that was honest about this:

“Brad Griffin, publisher of the white nationalist blog Occidental Dissent, is among Trump’s skeptics. “Do we honestly believe that he’s going to block all the Muslims and deport all the illegals?” he said. “I think he’s doing a lot of this just to signal to people that he’s on their side.”

Griffin said that he was most enthusiastic about Trump’s candidacy this summer, but that his fervor has cooled since seeing details of the businessman’s tax and trade policies, which hew more closely to mainstream Republican positions than he had hoped. …”

I had major reservations about supporting Donald Trump.

My biggest concern was that the Trump presidency would be another bait-and-switch like I had seen so many times from conservatives in the past. This is the reason why Occidental Dissent heavily covered the Trump transition period while the rest of the Alt-Right was so busy celebrating, congratulating itself and making plans to storm to power in Washington.

While I was an enthusiastic supporter of the Trump campaign in 2016, I was one of the first people in this scene to break with him after he won the presidency. I smelled a rat long before lots of other voices in the movement and was branded a “black piller” for pointing out lots of truths that other people didn’t want to hear at the time. It started when Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci showed up on the Trump transition team and Gary Cohn, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, was picked as Trump’s top economic adviser and Andrew Puzder, the CEO of Hardee’s, was nominated for Secretary of Labor. I found this impossible to square with Trump’s “I’m for the forgotten man” campaign message.

By January 2017, I was unironically angry and sounding the alarm about how Trump was going to sell out his populist voters by embracing the agenda of mainstream conservatism:

As @RichardBSpencer has pointed out, Trump has maybe a year to deliver on immigration. Instead, we’re plunging into the healthcare tar baby

— Hunter Wallace (@occdissent) January 3, 2017

I’m not against repealing Obamacare. I don’t want healthcare to CONSUME Trump like it did w/ Obama

— Hunter Wallace (@occdissent) January 3, 2017

Here we go again: plunging into the vortex of healthcare and tax cuts. It will be like Obama in ’08 and ’09 + W. in ’01

— Hunter Wallace (@occdissent) January 3, 2017

Obama wanted to pass amnesty, but he blew all his political capital on the stimulus & healthcare and lost Congress to the Tea Party in 2010

— Hunter Wallace (@occdissent) January 3, 2017

Pretty much. Don’t forget healthcare was THE black hole that consumed Obama’s entire agenda https://t.co/pCyNbnmwEl

— Hunter Wallace (@occdissent) January 3, 2017

The danger is fighting over healthcare, taxes and repealing Dodd-Frank consume all of 2017 https://t.co/bLmbIFARzX

— Hunter Wallace (@occdissent) January 2, 2017

1/ Paul Ryan’s agenda is same old conservatism: repeal Obamacare, tax cuts, deregulate Wall Street, condemn UN for being too hard on Israel

— Hunter Wallace (@occdissent) January 2, 2017

2/ Ryan and McConnell want to pass new sanctions on Russia w/ McCain and Graham. Also want to pass REINS for Chamber of Commerce

— Hunter Wallace (@occdissent) January 2, 2017

3/ Funny how Breitbart has nothing to say about Paul Ryan and McConnell railroading their own agenda through Congress

— Hunter Wallace (@occdissent) January 2, 2017

4/ It’s all the same stuff that President Mitt Romney would have signed. Reward huge corporations by catering to their interests

— Hunter Wallace (@occdissent) January 2, 2017

5/ Trump’s crowds screamed BUILD THE WALL and LOCK HER UP. Paul Ryan must have heard TAX CUTS and REINS Act

— Hunter Wallace (@occdissent) January 2, 2017

6/ Ryan and McConnell want to use the first 100 days to pass a bunch of stuff dreamed up by conservative think tanks

— Hunter Wallace (@occdissent) January 2, 2017

7/ What happened to BUILD THE WALL? Maybe we will get to that in 2020 after plunging into a healthcare fight like Obama did in 2008

— Hunter Wallace (@occdissent) January 2, 2017

8/ Anyone else have deja vu? The big tax cut was the first item on W.’s legislative agenda, too

— Hunter Wallace (@occdissent) January 2, 2017

9/ So far, I haven’t seen anything from Congress except big plans to do what Republicans always do

— Hunter Wallace (@occdissent) January 2, 2017

10/ How did we go from BUILD THE WALL to UNSHACKLE WALL STREET?

— Hunter Wallace (@occdissent) January 2, 2017

Fastforward to March 2019.

Read through the Occidental Dissent archives from December 2016 through March 2019 and you will find nearly everything you missed on countless dumb and websites that shilled from Trump and covered up what was really going on was documented and covered here.

We have NO WALL and record illegal immigration on the border. We have Drumpf repeatedly saying that now he wants to RAISE legal immigration with the CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce. We have record trade deficits. We have record deaths from alcohol, drug abuse and suicide. We have a literal Israel First regime change foreign policy now run by neocons like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo.

What do we have to show for supporting Drumpf? He used the political capital of the 2016 election on a massive permanent corporate tax cut (middle class tax cuts expire soon). We have the end of the Iran deal, Jerusalem, $38 billion for Israel, a permanent US presence in Syria “to protect Israel,” the end of all aid to the Palestinians, votes at the UN to protect Israel, etc. Virtually everything that Israel has wanted short of a war with Iran it has gotten under Donald Trump.

We have banking deregulation for Wall Street and tons of regulation cuts for corporate lobbyists. Larry Kudlow is now Trump’s top economic adviser. We have criminal justice reform which was sold to the Koch Brothers. We have the bump stocks ban. We have at least three condemnations of White Nationalism by the GOP Congress and seemingly daily new resolutions against “anti-Semitism.” We have a global crusade to push feminism and homosexuality on Iran and other foreign countries.

How bad have we gotten screwed under Trump? We voted for him to “move the Overton Window” on political correctness and the result was an unprecedented wave of Antifa violence, doxxing and deplatforming which he has done nothing about as it has crushed even some of his biggest supporters in the alternative media like Alex Jones. No one has suffered worse under Trump than the Rise Above Movement who are being prosecuted by Trump’s Justice Department. Trump and the GOP campaigned on social media censorship and Antifa violence in the 2018 midterms and then after the election dropped the issues, along with the hyped promise to end birthright citizenship, to focus on regime change in Venezuela and defending AIPAC from anti-Semitism!

The rise of Yang Gang should surprise no one.

The same people who liked Donald Trump BECAUSE he talked about “the forgotten man” and the opioid epidemic in White America now like Andrew Yang. Unlike Trump, Andrew Yang is talking about declining White birthrates and White men dying from suicide and drug abuse. Donald Trump has never once talked about White interests in the way that Yang has already done so. Is anyone surprised that resonated more strongly than eye-rolling conservative bullshit about how Drumpf after all these years is really, clandestinely “the avatar of White America”?

The “avatar of White America” can’t shut up about the black, Hispanic, Asian, LGBTQ and disabled unemployment rate. The “avatar of White America” spent the State of the Union address droning about the Holocaust and can’t shut up about how great he is for Jews and Israel for a single day. The “avatar of White America” wants you to know that the stock market has never been better for the investor class or that his tax cuts have led to soaring corporate profits.

Submerged underneath Trump’s America, populist voters are brimming with resentment about being conned by Donald Trump. Conned into voting for all this idealistic bullshit of “Making America Great Again” and being forced to sit here and watch him auction his policies outright to donors like he has already done on the tax cuts, criminal justice reform, Jerusalem and now legal immigration. We see him pushing for a $750 billion dollar military budget – another $34 billion increase in military spending on useless Boomer toys – which he wants to laughably pay for by slashing $1.1 trillion from Medicaid.

I look at this, and I just laugh:

“Dissident movements are…well…filled with dissident people, and plenty of those people are broken by the system. No surprise there. However, a movement that allows broken people in will go nowhere if that movement cannot either a) fix the broken people or b) remove those who cannot be fixed. Many broken people do not want to be fixed, they would rather latch onto something to destroy it, much the same way as they destroy themselves. Folks unironically advocating for Yang Gang are broken. They have given up hope in our movement’s ability to right what is wrong in society and would rather spend their time in frivolous “gibs me dat” pursuits, rather than champion ideas that can actually save our people and way of life. For those of us who are serious, we need to try to help fix these broken people so that they can help in our struggle to bring about real change or let them fall by the wayside by means of a swift boot to the ass. Keeping people around with a destructive mentality will only destroy us in the end, and this is one of the main reasons why dissident groups of the past have always failed. They have been more focused on quantity, rather than quality.”

Broken people?

Why are they broken? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that some of those “quality people” like RAM are going to prison because of Trump’s Justice Department. Maybe others are mired in lawsuits because “law and order” has been allowed to collapse under the Trump presidency. Maybe it is because the entire rightwing alternative media ecosystem from Alex Jones to the Daily Stormer has been obliterated as a result of cheerleadering for Donald Trump and the GOP?

Here’s a radical theory.

It is difficult to see the upside of the “free market” when you are constantly in fear of losing your job as a result of being doxxed, when hotels are constantly breaking contracts over your politics, when banks (who have benefited from Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation) are closing your accounts for “hate speech” and when you are being constantly censored on social media. Just how much money has the Dissident Right lost under the Trump presidency? It must be staggering.

“This is the sad realization: we have filled our ranks with broken people who lack the drive and willpower to forge on ahead in the face of defeat and act toward positive ends. We have those among us who, when the going got tough, decided to roll over and give up.”

Here’s another sad realization.

There are entire organizations that are crumbling, as well as individuals who are financially going under, because the movement is so broke that it can’t even afford the legal services of Elmer “Fudd” Woodward. Such is the glorious state of the movement under “free market” capitalism that even those who want to raise money can’t do it any other way than through the Post Office!

“We must recognize this is a positive because we are able to act upon it. We have the ability to right our course, clear out the destructive elements within, and begin gaining ground again. The Nazbol stuff and the Yang Gang is a symptom of a deeper issue, and only by recognizing the root cause and weeding it out can we ever have a chance to succeed in our endeavor. The black pill is not a negative thing, and some would argue it is a necessary step. I have often said that when you give up hope that someone will come along and save you, you will start acting in a way that will ensure you can save yourself. I am afraid I will have to take that back a bit. When people lose hope that someone will come along and save them, some will begin acting in ways that ensure they can save themselves; others will begin asking for handouts like our simian cohabitants.

-By Imperator”

Let me tell you something.

The last thing the movement needs right now is an Asian Democrat who wants to cancel out the relative power and influence of the SPLC and Jewish donors over our political system by giving every populist voter $100 Yang bucks to donate to any political campaign of their choosing.

The last thing we need is “handouts like our simian cohabitants” because we are BETTER than accepting $1,000 a month from an Asian-American president, who isn’t even White, who wants to create a social safety net for everyone who has been doxxed and the federal government to pump billions of dollars into our community! WE’RE BETTER THAN THIS, FOLKS!

We need to remember that the “forgotten man” needs to get off the welfare and pull himself up from by his bootstraps like Donald Trump and forget about his health care costs, student loans, his bills and the cost of private education for his children because, for one, the Pentagon and Israel are going to need that money, and two because four more years of Donald Trump will wake so many people up!