Two facts about Patrick Frey: He’s a prosecutor and an unabashed conservative. Two aspects of Patrick’s nature: He’s exceptionally smart and honest. One thing about his politics: He thinks Trump is a moron unworthy of being president. And Patrick has now been culled from the RedState herd because of this.
Several writers at RedState were fired today, including me. All those fired were Trump critics.
Salem, the owner of RedState, is perfectly within its legal rights to do this. They can take their site in any direction they want. But the message sent by firing a group of writers en masse, all of whom have been vigorous critics of the President, will have a chilling effect — both on the remaining writers at the site, and the conservative movement as a whole.
To the simpletons of the far left, anyone who wasn’t progressive was, by definition, a Trumpkin. To those who thought slightly harder, this was clearly wrong. Few conservatives with an education and any capacity for reflection were unaware of the fact that Trump was manifestly unqualified for the job, both intellectually and otherwise.
The immediate refrain following the election, that the sky was falling, came from those whose heads exploded at the mere mention of Trump’s name. This not only failed to persuade anyone otherwise disinclined to hysteria, but sucked the force of impropriety out of the room. When you shriek about everything, nothing stands out. When you shriek constantly, it becomes background din and is soon ignored.
But when the right decides to cannibalize its own in order to stand behind Trump, it’s a paradigm shift. Ironically, it’s not one that progressives would care about, since why would they be concerned that some conservative was thrown out of the club. But the removal of contrarian conservatives, anti-Trump conservatives, reflects a far more nefarious problem than the “Trump is literally Hitler” attacks of the left. It’s a consolidation of power by the eradication of viewpoint diversity.
Of course, writers and radio talkers are fired or rescheduled all the time, and the owners of an online publication or radio network have an absolute right to determine the editorial direction of their website and broadcasts. The importance of the mass firings at RedState, and of Salem’s cautionary emails to its radio hosts, lies in the way they reflect widespread changes in the conservative movement in America—in particular, a narrowing of viewpoint diversity, and a rampant fear of speaking one’s mind.
Salem Media owns the soapbox upon which many conservatives stood. That they supported a candidate from their team, or at least far more so than the other team, is unsurprising. But then, they didn’t stop there. It was no longer just about promoting the conservative point of view, but about promoting the pro-Trump point of view to the exclusion of the anti-Trump conservatives.
And as Patrick explains, one of the cornerstones of the conservative complaint about progressives suddenly became a criticism of their own.
Conservatives have often said, with justice, that a lack of viewpoint diversity is a problem of the Left and not of the Right. Historically, it is members of the Left, not the Right, who shout down speakers, physically attack people because of their views, and attempt to use the power of organized boycotts or government authority to stamp out speech they don’t like.
The Left typically employs this despotic set of behaviors in the service of identity politics, paternalistically creating classes of people who Cannot Be Criticized in polite society. These groups are usually defined by race, gender, sexual orientation, and other similar characteristics. If you happen to fall in a protected group, the Left will shout down any criticism of the behavior of your group.
To the left, this would suggest that the identity group being elevated to the top of the hierarchy on the right is white males, because everyone who isn’t progressive is a Nazi. But that’s not the view Patrick sees.
But what used to be a problem only on the Left is now a problem on the Right as well. Donald Trump has fractured the conservative movement, and with the entrenchment of the fault line between Trump supporters and Trump critics, the Right now suffers from its own political correctness. But the protected class that is officially Free From Criticism is not gays, or women, or blacks. It is Donald Trump.
Patrick goes on to describe in detail the problems with Trump, that should come as a surprise to no one. He ridicules the rationalizations of the right to give Trump a pass for his trespasses, both personal and presidential, just as he does of the left. And ultimately notes that Trotsky has been disappeared from Stalin’s inner circle.
As a result, those of us on the Right who often criticize Donald Trump have largely become isolated amidst the rubble of what used to be our movement. We don’t share the policy views of the so-called ‘Resistance,’ with its enthusiasm for socialistic solutions to inequality, and its relentless quest to squash any challenge to racial and gender tribalism. But nor are we willing to pretend that a largely illiterate and immoral buffoon afflicted with a pathological narcissism is a fit occupant of the Oval Office.
This is a voice that needs to be heard within legitimate and intellectually-honest conservative circles, so the ouster of Patrick and others, no matter whether you agree with them or despise them, is a huge and dangerous shift that has largely gone unappreciated. Conservatives aren’t moved by blockbuster stories at Vox, but they may well be influenced by smart conservatives with unimpeachable integrity. Like Patrick Frey. Who was disappeared from RedState.
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Dear Papa,
Frey is just a swamp monster now that he’s been ousted. He’d better watch out for ice picks, since he’s now a heretic to his own cause. Talk of free trade before the Glorious Trade War is treason. Maybe now that Frey has some more time on his hands, he can spend it wisely and pick up a better understanding of his “enemies” rather than bemoan his exile.
Best,
PK
Nice ice pick reference, PK. He’s also a pretty great rock guitar player. You would love his music.
As a Trump critic, he surely has numerous alternative opportunities in the world of “journalism.” They can’t “eradicate” a viewpoint, but only move it around.
The point isn’t that there is no other soapbox, but that conservative soapboxes have chosen to no longer tolerate anti-Trump conservatives views.
At least some conservative soapboxes, or perhaps a conservative soapbox.
Frey and some of his old compatriots at RedState were not just anti-Trump. Instead, they were anti- anyone who wasn’t anti-Trump, and thought insults and repetition of lefty talking points was sufficient to support their position. Indeed, their argumentation had the same quality that they supposedly protested in Trump himself: full of piss and vinegar, and little self-awareness and coherent principle beyond not liking something or more often someone.
Pre-Trump, Frey used to be capable of occasional considered opinions, though more gung-ho and pro-police than I preferred. In the Trump era, he’s become a near Trump-like caricature. Personally, I tend to avoid the shrill regardless of where they happen to fall on the political spectrum or pro- or anti-Trump line.
(RedState is a weird website. For some reason, all their internal links go through an ad service, so are unclickable if you prefer not to be tracked. Do many people even read it? Frey seems to have landed at Resurgent, a RedState alternative filled to the brim with shrill anti-Trumpers. The National Review, Federalist, Weekly Standard, and Commentary all have their share of anti-Trumpers still on staff across a range of shill-ness.)
So you don’t like his posts? Okay then.
You can’t eradicate views of campus speakers by disinviting or shouting them down either, but by keeping them out of certain that particular forum, you create viewpoint silos and groupthink incubators.
When the unbelievers are kicked out, the believers will become more fervent and extreme in their beliefs. Biases are confirmed. Dissenters are kicked to the curb. Viewpoints become even more extreme without anyone willing to disagree or put up a fight.
And if the goal is to increasingly alienate everybody but the “believers,” this is really useful.
And lost in the discussion are those of us who lean conservative, not really fond of Darth Cheeto, but say “regardless, he’s the President, and we want to see him succeed because if he succeeds America succeeds.”
That doesn’t sit well with the Left, who sees us as Trumpkins, or the NeverTrumpers who dismiss you as “weak-willed” and “unprincipled.” That view isn’t really much better than the red-hatted MAGA set who cheer his every golf outing and call you a “cuck” if you don’t laud Darth Cheeto as the “god king emperor.”
This increasing partisan divide is pushing more and more people to the extremes in rapid fashion. It’s the one thing that really worries me: our ability to see nuance in each others’ ideology and respect others despite disagreeing with them on nearly every issue seems to be rapidly disappearing.
Hopefully one day we will return to the time when name calling stops, listening returns, and we can start saying things like “He’s a really nice guy who’s just wrong about everything” about those with whom we disagree.
He’s kind of a vulgar dick. Always has been, which is why none of the billionaires would invite him to dinner. This was before he went on TV. And still I hope he succeeds, or more to the point, doesn’t get us killed, because his failures affect real people.
“Ironically, it’s not one that progressives would care about…”
Does schadenfreude count as caring? How about jubilance? If so, you’d be amazed how much I care about the GOP coming apart at the seams.
There are times you make yourself come off as insufferably petty and insipid, and take inexplicable pride in it. You can be mindlessly tribal to a fault.