Cracks in MAGA-Duginism

"But how will this affect my favorite e-celebs?"

First of all, nothing ever happens. If someone does happen, that thing is fake. If it’s real, it doesn’t matter. If it matters, it’s marginal.

With that being said, here are some potential effects of Venezuela being Milei-ified:

• Venezuelans get richer (ok, but how does that affect me personally?)

• Venezuelan immigrants go home (less Latina hotties 😔)

• Venezuela floods the market with cheap oil.¹

Domestically, if the price of oil drops, that would drive down inflation, lower the price of energy, and benefit the American voter. The stock market will rise and the economy will improve.

For Russia, if the price of oil drops, that will worsen its already struggling economy and drag down Russian morale. Depending on how Russians respond to worsening economic conditions, this strike on Venezuela could end up helping Ukraine more than direct aid itself.

But this is all speculation on my part. What I am more confident of is the ideological impact on MAGA-Duginism.

A brief history of MAGA-Duginism

For those who are unaware, MAGA-Duginism is the following set of beliefs:

• Third world dictators like Saddam, Assad, and Putin are based, because they hate gay people and protect Christians

• Ukraine is evil, because they are gay (Zelensky is “ratlike,” according to Carlson)

• Europe is evil, because they are gay — unless we’re talking about the pro-Russian AfD, in which case, they are BASED

Assad and Maduro were BFFs — a fact that BAP is not allowed to talk about.

MAGA-Duginism is, at its core, a simultaneous commitment to isolationism (anti-war sentiment) and conservatism. MAGA-Duginism is comparable to the loyalists who opposed the American Revolution; the Copperheads who opposed the Civil War; the isolationists who opposed America’s entry into WWI and WWII; and even white nationalists who opposed America’s involvement in Korea or Vietnam.²

With the rise of the Cold War, conservatism and isolationism became mutually exclusive. The rise of the neo-conservative, a pro-war form of conservatism, overshadowed the legacy of the 1930s “America First” movement. But in the 1990s, cracks in the neo-conservative movement began to form.

It started with the “paleo-cons”; people like Paul Gottfried, Sam Francis, Jared Taylor, and Pat Buchanan. Paleo-conservatives were increasingly critical of the dominant role that Israel was playing in American politics. This was the high point of the Christian Zionist movement, and these paleo-cons were sensing that something big and terrible was on the horizon. They were correct to be anxious: the Iraq War was right around the corner.

In the 1990s, the American public really didn’t understand any of their work. Too artsy, too intellectual. It was only after 9/11 that Israel’s presence became more apparent.

The rise of Ron Paul, Alex Jones, Andrew Anglin, Chuck Johnson, Mike Peinovich, and Richard Spencer destroyed the neo-conservative monopoly. They deepened and enriched the ideas of the preceding three movements (Copperheads, America First, and Paleocons).

Pro-Assad talking points converged with the Trump campaign. Assad was “fighting ISIS,” while Obama was “funding ISIS.” Richard Spencer’s wife translated Dugin into English. Across the pond, Nick Griffin and Marine Le Pen promoted closer ties with Russia.

In the mind of a MAGA-Duginist, Assad was part of a global multi-polar coalition whose goal was to humiliate the woke globalists and put power back in the hands of national populists. Janet Yellen would be put in a gas chamber, and Bannon Trump would bring about the ethnostate.

In terms of memetic craftsmanship and propagandistic appeal to the youth, the libertarian-to-alt-right pipeline hit a new peak of professionalism. By far, the alt-right was the most dynamic, energetic, and explosive political movement of the right-wing in the past 100 years.³ By 2014 it was already in full swing, and the Trump campaign tapped into this energy to bring about the upset of 2016.

Remember when the New York Times said Clinton had a 92% chance of winning? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

The wild euphoria of the alt-right on November 9th, 2016, could be compared to how Christians must have felt during the Pentecost. The alt-lite, including Gavin McGinnes, Mike Cernovich, Jack Posobiec, and Milo Yiannopoulos, were united together with Spencer, Peinovich, Anglin, and Chuck Johnson. But that brief moment was not to last.

Immediately, in a now forgettable and obscure moment, Trump launched airstrikes against Syria. For most of the MAGA movement, this was a nothing-burger. But for Spencer and Peinovich, this was a betrayal of the anti-war MAGA message: no more foreign wars for Israel.

While MAGA lost Spencer and Peinovich,⁴ it gained a whole host of new adherents: Nick Fuentes, Jackson Hinkle, Haz al-Din, Keith Woods, Edward Dutton, BAP, Raw Egg Nationalist, and thousands more joined the ranks of MAGA.

This new crop of e-celebs were more commercially polished, and therefore more satisfying, in a narrower way. The intellectual diversity and philosophical orientation of the earlier alt-right was replaced with conformity and “practical politics.” The alt-right transformed from “political art” into “political machine.”

On Twitter, some of these pro-Assad MAGA affiliates openly embraced Hitler. When BAP was banned, he created a new account called “Latinx Putler,” and praised Saddam Hussein. Nick Fuentes held a conference where he praised Putin to a hyperbolic degree (which he now claims was ironic).

The account has since been renamed and the handle taken by someone else.

On the other hand, other pro-Assad accounts were openly “third worldist.” They promoted Stalin, Xi, and opposed the CIA. These included people like Syrian Girl and Jackson Hinkle.⁵

Beyond these obscure e-celebs, you had politicians like Tulsi Gabbard, whose claim to fame was “opposing regime change wars,” supporting both Assad and Putin. She later switched parties to embrace MAGA. You also have MTG and Tucker Carlson, who have voiced support for Venezuela.

What’s unique about MAGA-Duginism is that it combines the social conservatism of the right with the anti-CIA (“deep state”) narrative of the left. If we define MAGA-Duginism in this way, we can also include Mike Benz and Curtis Yarvin in this category.

At the heart of the ideology, MAGA-Duginism hates, above all, the “Deep State.” The Deep State is an unaccountable bureaucracy which censors free speech, allows mass immigration, and starts foreign wars for Israel. According to Yarvin, all these things (maybe with the exception of immigration) could be “based” if they were done by a monarch like Tim Cook, but when done by Hillary Clinton, they become “cringe.”

MAGA-Duginists were squealing with glee when JD Vance insulted Zelensky.⁶ Finally, someone with balls was standing up against the Gay American Empire, the woke left, and the Deep State.

Among the squealers were Douglas MacGregor and Scott Ritter, who claimed that Israel would be invaded by Turkey, and Iran would defeat Israel, and all sorts of other ridiculous things that never came true.

Personally, if I was Russia, and I was paying agents to spread disinformation, I would not instruct them to discredit themselves with wildly improbable predictions. This leads me to believe that MacGregor and Ritter are not paid Russian agents.⁷

The Future of the Vance Campaign

How are all of these characters going to react to the invasion of Venezuela? They have three options:

1. Try to separate Venezuela from Russia — Russia is still based, but Venezuela was cringe. I expect Curtis Yarvin and BAP to take this position. Putin and Assad are the good kind of dictator, because they are white adjacent, while Maduro is a bad dictator because he is brown.

2. Try to separate MAGA from Trump — this is the MTG strategy. I expect Ritter, MacGregor, and Hinkle to claim that Trump is being “mislead by neo-cons.”

The consequences of this split in the MAGA-Duginist coalition will fall at the feet of JD Vance. If he embraces regime change in Venezuela, that undermines his credibility on the far right.

How will JD Vance fare in a 2028 Republican Primary, if Tucker and Bannon and MTG are calling him a “regime change neo-con”? How will he defend himself from that charge? In order to gain back this credibility, he might have to go even harder against Europe or Ukraine than he already has.

In other words, this “crack” in the MAGA-Duginist coalition might lead to “overcompensation” from Vance toward stronger anti-NATO positions. Weirdly enough, this was the foreign policy of Obama: the “Russian reset” and the pivot to Asia. Perhaps Vance has just been an Obama supporter this whole time?

In the long term, I am concerned that the intervention in Venezuela will not diminish the strength of MAGA-Duginism. Rather, it will intensify MAGA-Duginism with respect to Ukraine in order to “compensate” for classical neo-conservatism in the western hemisphere. That does not seem like a good trade.

Conclusion

This is just my off-the-cuff impression on the state of internet politics. I do not have any deeper insights on the larger geopolitical next-steps, because I did not expect Trump to kidnap Maduro.

This reminds me a lot of my surprise during the Iranian-Israeli War. I thought, surely, Iran would put up stiffer resistance. Surely, the great Lion of Persia would not simply go the way of Hezbollah… We can add this to my list of bad predictions.

I consistently overrate the ability of third world dictators to not be humiliated like utter fools. This probably comes from a deep-seated third-worldist bias, which I apologize for. I am listening and learning.

Right now, this war (kidnapping?) looks bad for the left. Trump won; regime change is good; everyone is happy. Total Trump victory. If Venezuelan oil boosts the American economy and forces Russia to negotiate for peace, 2026 will be much harder to win for Democrats than I previously predicted.

Of course, there’s still time for things to go wrong. I have no clue who Maduro’s second-in-command is, but assuming he is also a dictatorial socialist, nothing will have been achieved. I couldn’t tell you either way.

The partisan in me hopes that everything goes wrong and Trump loses. But the Deep State respecter in me hopes that Venezuela turns into a flourishing democracy. At the end of the day, I would rather have America win under a Republican administration than to see things go wrong for the benefit of my petty political affiliations.

I’m still hopeful that Democrats can put behind the failures of 2024 and become a better party for 2026; maybe a Republican victory in the midterms would actually accelerate that process. There’s no greater motivator for change than humiliation. We’ll see.

When Assad fell under Biden, I was quite happy, because victory was achieved by native Syrian forces rather than an illegal American intervention. I do think there is a case to be made that Trump is undermining the “rules based order,” and this will embolden revisionist powers around the world.

1. Or maybe another socialist takes power to replace Maduro and nothing much changes.

2. See Revilo P. Oliver, Francis Parker Yockey, George Lincoln Rockwell.

3. Reaganism and Nixonism were more electorally successful, but this was due to their appeal among the 30-55 year old crowd, not a specific appeal to the youth.

4. Spencer voted for Biden, and Peinovich started some obscure Nazi party spinoff, which is what most white nationalist movements eventually converge on over time.

5. Logo Daedalus and Kantbot might also belong in this category, but they blocked me long ago so I don’t really know.

6. BASED!

7. If anyone is paying them, it would be Taiwanese and Chinese dissidents, but we’re not allowed to talk about that.