James Lindsay’s Woke Right Attack Defeated

What began as a subversive operation to discredit the ideas of Christian Nationalism has ultimately backfired on James Lindsay. The use of the label “woke right” has been a liberal smear tactic for some time, with adversaries like James Lindsay, Konstantin Kisin, Joel Berry, and Neil Shenvi all championing the term against Christian Nationalists and adjacent movements. Initially, Lindsay celebrated his rewrite of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto getting published by the American Reformer, but shortly after, this campaign resoundingly backfired on Lindsay.

For starters, Lindsay’s argument that agreement with Marx’s critiques of liberalism equates to being a Marxist. This is an absurd, fallacious argument, especially in the realm of political theory and philosophy where there were countless men who held similar critiques of liberalism to Marx while holding to different solutions. Moreover, Marx believed liberalism would transition into communism, so his presuppositions were liberal, which cannot be said of Christian Nationalism.

As the battle raged on social media, several prominent figures came out against Lindsay, giving way to defeat and delegitimization of the term “woke right.” While it is important that Christians fight this term, American Reformer had some very interesting cobelligerents who took up the fight, several of whom were previously unfamiliar with their outlet.

The first is Christopher Rufo. There is much that can be said of Rufo, who is very much a product of think-tank conservatism and very much holds to neoconservatism. Regarding issues of race, he is not one to apply the term anti-white to describe the actions of the Left. However, despite his flaws—like hiring a pornstar for journalism, he has major institutional credibility, stemming from the Manhattan Institute and his presence on the board of New College of Florida. So while he is one to assess academic papers for plagiarism, even he found the plagiarism of James Lindsay to be lacking:

I’ve been watching this debate and I think we’re missing something important. I am not a fan of some of the right-wing movements you seem to be referencing, but there is nothing necessarily “woke” about identity, grievance, and oppression, which are universal concepts in politics.

America’s founders, for example, completed their revolution using those concepts: they forged an American identity; the Declaration’s longest section is a list of grievances; and they used the precise word “oppression” hundreds of times in pamphlets to describe life under the Crown. But it would be foolish to describe them as “woke,” “communists,” or “identitarians”—the background conditions and details are too different to make this translation meaningful. It becomes a false equivalence, because the content is different.

In other words, we can say that, although they both use “identity,” “grievance,” and “oppression” as concepts, the American Revolution was good, while the Russian Revolution was bad.

Notice that Rufo does not claim to be an ally of Christian Nationalism or paleoconservatism, but even he finds the term deficient because all politics deals with the redress of grievances of one group of people through the political process. He also extends Lindsay’s standard to the American Revolution, which would become no different than the Russian Revolution under Lindsay’s logic.

Rufo would go on to say that “antisemitic conspiracism” would be a better label, in what his tacit recognition that “woke right” is merely a cudgel for Noticing. Despite being a neoconservative, Rufo is not as hostile towards the Right as Lindsay, and his stance against him in this smear campaign is a major blow to Lindsay’s credibility, even if only because Rufo possesses think-tank institutional backing while operating in a similar capacity within Conservative Inc.

The next major allies to emerge against Lindsay were British-owned Lotus Eaters, which would include Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad) and Neema Parnini (Academic Agent). The former arose out of GamerGate, which was the reaction to wokeness infiltrating videogames while the latter is the friendly rival to Auron MacIntyre’s cigar bet. Unlike Lindsay, both specialize in philosophy whereas Lindsay is a mathematician. Neither is a professing Christian, which cannot be said of Rufo who is catholic. What is important about these two is their influence within the Libertarian-to-Paleoconservative pipeline, where many of those who arrive at the so-called “Dissident Right” do so after listening to their voices. This is why their influence in online socio-political spheres is important.

Carl Benjamin, in engaging with Marx on a philosophical level, refuted Lindsay by addressing how Marx was himself a liberal and that Marx is just the natural progression of liberalism. He does this by identifying this quote:

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying, “This is mine”, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes, might not anyone have saved mankind by pulling up the stakes, filling in the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

When people are properly talking about classical liberalism, they are talking about the ideas of Rousseau and Locke. Within Rousseau’s own writings, he identifies property ownership as the origin of all human conflict. As Benjamin points out, Marx is the logical progression of these ideas, as he furthers these ideas to suggest that all property should be held in common and that there should be a classless society. This was liberalism from the beginning.

What became apparent was that many self-identified liberals fail to understand their own ideology, often attributing elements like limited government, rights, and free markets, none of which are liberal since they predate the Enlightenment. For example, limited government by the consent of the governed can be found in Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex while paleoconservatism holds to free markets domestically with protectionist trade policies, which is more aligned with Alexander Hamilton and Friedrich List, not Adam Smith.

Lindsay wrote about “natural superiors,” but this is antithetical to Marx’s classless society and liberal notions of egalitarianism. In fact, Christian Nationalism and Paleoconservatism belief in Natural Hierarchies asserts the existence of class and hierarchies within human relations as innately good and best for human flourishing. Even Rousseau questioned whether liberty could exist without slavery, contrary to his own egalitarian ideas. Furthermore, The 1607 Project articulated that Virginia’s aristocratic founding was the embodiment of America more than the Puritans of New England.

Interestingly, in his response, Neema Parnini (Academic Agent) cited that despite his wide following, Lindsay’s influence is rather shallow, comparing him to Ben Shapiro. Conversely, he claims that men like Rogan have influence because of their authenticity. The audience relates to these figures because they open up about themselves. This overall indicates that large followings do not equate to true influence.

Perhaps the most poignant sign of defeat by Team Lindsay is that of Konstantin Kisin, who announced that he is withdrawing the term Woke Right. Now, Kisin would go on to say he was “trolling” with regards to the term, and that people fell for his bait, but that was only after being dunked on. If not the originator, Kisin is one of the earliest purveyors of the term. The host of the Triggernometry Podcast is the son of a Russian oligarch who was kicked out of Russia for reasons. Because the term “woke right” is used to defame Noticers, Kisin is a fierce advocate of the term. The fact that he wants an alternative label is a tacit acknowledgment of defeat while he tries to “save face.”

Conclusion

Operation Woke Right began as a smear campaign to label various anti-Zionist factions on the right as “woke” to signify that they were just like the Left. This ultimately culminated in Lindsay sneaking an article past American Reformer’s battlelines and celebrating what he thought was a win. Politics is a game in which strange bedfellows often align, and in this case, the Christian Nationalists were joined surprisingly by Chris Rufo when it was revealed that the New Christian Right has friends across the pond, that while not Christian, are anti-liberal.

After a week, the Leftist containment op has been resoundingly defeated. What James Lindsay intended for evil, God intended for good.