Contrarians of the New Right

Why do so many culture warriors of the Right have a visceral antipathy towards Ukraine? Their animosity goes beyond taking a side in the conflict, and reaches the absurd: they claim that the war in Ukraine is staged, that President Zelensky is a cokehead, and that U.S. aid is a money-laundering operation.¹ The factor explaining their absurd antipathy points to a vicious trend that has implications beyond a single issue like the Ukraine war.

Their stance is mysterious, because if we consider their professed “conservative” values, we would expect them to be sympathetic to Ukrainians. In a time when the new Right talks incessantly about how modern men are “feminized and weak” and politicians have given up the cause of national sovereignty, the Ukrainians are fighting like lions and dying to defend their nation against a Goliath aggressor. But what is the reaction of these culture warriors to Ukraine’s virtuous struggle? Not only cynicism, but outright hostility. These advocates of masculinity and nationalism want a leader whose country is under attack to drop his shield and capitulate.

Some may think that these culture warriors are “pro-Putin.” Though some may favor Putin’s nationalism, this is a superficial explanation for many others’ absurd antipathy towards Ukraine. What motivates them is not primarily their support for something, but their opposition to something.

To get a better grip on how these people think, we need to understand what the new Right is. By “the new Right” I mean a loose network that emerged in the last decade and is active in the culture wars. It includes social and alternative media influencers (like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Jack Posobiec) and politicians (like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy). And it includes their numerous followers and the segment of Donald Trump supporters who are fanatical. Uniting this loose network is their opposition to both the liberal-leftist ideology and what they see as establishment conservatism. The new Right should not be understood as a coherent political ideology, but as a political tribe.

There are two ways a tribalist makes up his mind on an issue. The first is by following the line of his group. This is, after all, the essence of tribalism: making sense of one’s self, of others, and of the world through the prism of the group. These days though, we can see another kind of tribalist who follows another guide: first he observes what the other group, the enemy tribe, stands for, and then he supports the opposite position. Whatever the enemy believes and supports, this is the bad; whatever they oppose, the good. Thus, the enemy, the other, becomes the standard of true and false, the yardstick of right and wrong. This mode of thinking is still tribalism: the standard of truth is still other people and opposition to what they believe.

I will call this subcategory of tribalism contrarianism. Interestingly, the contrarian thinks he is the opposite of a tribalist. He makes fun of the masses, calling them victims of groupthink or “NPCs” (the Non-Player Characters of video games who lack agency). In the contrarian’s mind, he is above any such brainwashing and claims to do “his own research.” Yet if he simply adjusts his thinking about all major topics by picking whatever is the opposite of the dominant opinion, he’s not really thinking.

This mental habit of the tribalist new Right explains why their view about one political issue can be reliably predicted based on their take on a different, unrelated topic. Many who think that the election of 2020 was rigged also tend to believe that the vaccines made young people “drop like flies.”² Why would someone’s view on a domestic policy controversy like the 2020 elections give us insight into their view on a medical issue, like the efficacy of a vaccine? It is because they formed their views on all those topics following the same method: opposing the consensus of the “liberals/progressives/globalists,” i.e. the “current thing.”

To return to our original question, why do new Right culture warriors oppose the struggle of a nation to maintain its freedom against an aggressor? Because Ukraine and Zelensky also became “the current thing.” Ukraine and Zelensky inspired the support and the admiration of the Right’s enemy: of the “woke,” of the “liberal powers that be,” of even the old “neoliberal” GOP establishment — everything the new Right don’t want to be. Out goes any consideration of principles of right and wrong, such that Ukraine is the wronged party, having been attacked by an aggressive enemy and heroically fighting for its survival. Considerations about truth, and about right and wrong, are not part of how the new Right culture warriors make up their mind about the world.

The new Right culture warriors are motivated only by a negative. Their primary motive is not a love for Russia. Most of them have no idea about the economic, cultural, and social situation in Russia. But it doesn’t matter, because for them the crucial aim is not for Russia to succeed; they just want Ukraine — and its liberal supporters — to fail.

A movement motivated not primarily by values, but by mere tribal opposition, will eventually attract people opposed to values as such. The ugly face of this feature of new Right contrarianism is the nihilism of a Jackson Hinkle. With 2.6 million followers on Twitter/X, Hinkle is a self-styled “conservative” who cheerleads all the enemies of the West, from Hamas to Iran to Kim Jong Un (!). What positive values do these three have in common? Nothing. But, together with Hinkle, they all stand for destroying something positive: the values of the West, from liberty and individual rights to rule of law and progress. They stand for the nihilism captured by a line from The Dark Knight: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

Understanding the character of the new Right contrarians should give us insight into how to oppose their tribalism and nihilism. They are collectivists, in thought and in action. Their existential compass is the group. The opposite of collectivism is individualism, and the opposite of tribalism is independent thinking — taking the responsibility to make sense of the world on one’s own. Independent thinking is difficult, and in no way infallible. Yet, it is our only navigating instrument towards the truth. There is no substitute for the responsibility to think.

And then we come to opposing contrarianism. The contrarian’s opposition to “the current thing” can appear superficially understandable; there are numerous real flaws and problems with many established ideas and institutions in Western societies. But opposing “the current thing” needs to be carefully thought out in terms of principles. It should not be knee-jerk contrarianism, which simply substitutes one form of irrationalism with another. As we’ve seen, such a process can lead to the darkness of nihilism.

That the tribalists of the new Right promise to make America great again is an outrageous farce. The people who made America great were the opposite of tribalists. They had the self-esteem to see the world through their own judgment and to put no tribal allegiance or dogma above it. It can only be independent thinkers that can appreciate and pursue the positive values that have made America a country worth loving and fighting for: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

To be an American patriot, one must first reject tribalism.

1. See for example: Lisa Mascaro and Kevin Freking, “Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene vows to force a vote next week on ousting House Speaker Mike Johnson,” Associated Press, May 1, 2024; David Gilbert, “Far-Right Conspiracy Theory Wants You to Think Ukraine War Was Staged,” Vice, March 23, 2022; Justin Rohrlich, “Pro-Russia Social Media Accounts Are Spreading a Fake Zelensky Cocaine Video,” Rolling Stone, April 18, 2022; Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich), December 25 2023, https://x.com/Cernovich/status/1739400544530379047?s=20.
2. Justin Baragona, “Candace Owens Pushes Unhinged Vax Conspiracy About Bob Saget’s Death,” Daily Beast, January 19, 2022.