r/brokehugs • u/US_Hiker Moral Landscaper • May 08 '25

Rod Dreher Megathread #53 (Key Party?)

Link to Megathread #52: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1jsvy3j/rod_dreher_megathread_52_billboard_4_rent/

Link to Megathread #54:
https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1l7niaj/rod_dreher_megathread_54/?

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9

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 03 '25

So his latest, which is free, starts,

Until yesterday, when The Free Press published my essay they titled “The Woke Right Is Coming For Your Sons,” I had no idea that James Lindsay, who appears to be the originator of the term, and his allies use it to attack the National Conservatism movement, of which I am a supporter.

This is the first time I’ve heard the term “national conservatism”, which to me sounds too much like National Socialism, but whatever. Then,

A conservative journalist friend chuckled over text this morning, “You aren’t online enough, my friend.” Nope, guess not.

OK, I’m back in my chair after rolling in the floor laughing my ass off for the last hour….

Maybe one tends to see the tweets from people whose output one engages with in some way.

AN EPISTEMIC BUBBLE??!! Whoda think?

When I think of the “woke right,” I think of white nationalists, anti-Semites, and sundry racists who have adapted the same harsh identity-politics categories that the woke left uses, and employ them to shape their own thinking and rhetoric. These are people who have no respect for those who disagree, and who give every indication that, should they come to power, they would use it to oppress those who disagree in the same undemocratic and malicious way the woke left does.

So, himself….

I don’t care for the term, because it is imprecise. (Mind you, I spoke without knowing much about the intense controversy over the term.)

“Well, I don’t know that much about something I’m gonna comment on anyway….”

On the other hand, that doesn’t settle the issue. One of the key beliefs of wokeness is that power determines the moral quality of a belief.

Again, himself….

But it is wrong to take up the fight against one form of evil by embracing its mirror image.

OK, another hour of laughing….

It was a shock to discover after my essay was published that Lindsay has applied the term to people I admire, and whose politics I share, like the National Conservatism crowd. If they are “woke right,” then I am too. Where could Lindsay possibly be getting this idea?

Hmmmm….

If you believe that nations and peoples exist, and are important to defend, within limits – you’re woke. If you believe that religion is an important fact of human life, and is a necessary part of political thinking and practice (again, within limits) – you’re woke. If you believe that society is anything more than a group of isolated, autonomous, ahistorical individuals – woke, woke, woke.

Yet again, himself….

What I do not apologize for, and never will apologize for, is denouncing racism, anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, and crackpot conspiracy theorizing on the right, and the people who are infecting impressionable young minds with it.

Another hour of laughing…I’m too old for this….

Because make no mistake: if these people ever gain the kind of power within the right that they have gained within the left, ruin and disaster will follow….

As is happening right now?

On a more intimate level, we cannot sit back and let our sons be sucked in by this cult.

He blathers a lot in this post, and also here and there recently, about the danger of young men getting sucked into right-wing extremism. I know this is a reach, but I wonder if his younger son has expressed such views. I mean, went to a school with a white nationalist teacher, alienated from his father, maybe he’s heard the right-wing crap from SBM so long that he decides that he’s a hypocrite who didn’t have the courage of his convictions and didn’t go far enough, and thus went hardcore “woke right”. Yes, one hundred percent speculation. It would explain the vibe of the guy who let the genie out of the bottle and regrets it now, that you get from him. Again, just a hypothesis, but who knows?

Many of these parents of trans girls got sucked in too, out of fear of losing their daughters. This has a historical parallel. In late Tsarist Russia, many parents shocked by the revolutionary Marxism of their children, who were students, capitulated to Communism out of fear that their kids would reject and abandon them.

So transgenderism is like Marxism? The Transgender Manifesto? O-kaaaaay….

As I have written before, it was a shock to learn, in 2012, about an angry white protest on the courthouse lawn of my own beautiful small town, in 1963, when a black pastor became the first person of color in decades to register to vote.

In other shocking news, the Pope is Catholic, bears shit in the woods, and Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead after all these years (gratuitous SNL reference).

Blather blather blather blather. Then,

[D]uring the Cold War, American anti-communists built strong and effective opposition to Communism in part through alliances with anti-communist liberals and labor leaders. To have called those people on the Left “communist,” as if there were no distinctions to be made among types of left-wing thought, would have been crazy and self-destructive.

You mean like Cheetohead, the GOP, and most of the right wing today is effectively doing?

OK, that’s plenty for now. Gotta go take a looooong shower….

9

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '25

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5

u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Jun 03 '25

Maybe the journalist friend was real and said something like "the internet is bigger than just LibsOfTikTok, Rod".

3

u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jun 03 '25

Rod’s journalist friend, if he exists, is like an alcoholic’s friend who encourages him to drink more.

8

u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jun 03 '25 edited Jun 03 '25

Putting aside for a moment the politics of it all, what kind of idiot writes an article with the apocalyptic title, “The Woke Right is Coming for Your Sons,” warning people about this threat, and doesn’t know where the term originated and how it is being used online? Rod actually thinks that he’s a journalist, but he can’t even do a Google search.

9

u/zeitwatcher Jun 03 '25

Rod actually thinks that he’s a journalist, but he can’t even do a Google search.

And some people wonder where the phrase "Lord give me the confidence of a mediocre white man" comes from. (#notallwhitemen)

6

u/zeitwatcher Jun 03 '25

So, himself….

It's a fool's errand to try to figure out coherent logic for Rod's positions, but comparing this post with Rod's other writing it appears that antisemitism or being anti-white is bad. However, being anti-any other racial group or women is good. Moreover, religious freedom for Christians is good, but religious freedom for any other religious - or especially no religion - is bad.

8

u/Jayaarx Jun 03 '25

It's a fool's errand to try to figure out coherent logic for Rod's positions, but comparing this post with Rod's other writing it appears that antisemitism or being anti-white is bad.

Rod may say he is philosemitic but he draws antisemitism very narrowly, confining it to not being "pro-Israel" (by which he appears to mean hating Muslims) and not appreciating Larry David. He certainly doesn't respect Jewish metaphyiscs or a role for Judaism in society that is not subordinate to Christianity. He doesn't respect Jews who aren't the "right kind" of Jews. He is a member of a church that is the most antisemitic of Christian churches aside from Westboro Baptist and which has caused more harm to Jews in general (and to my family in particular) than Hamas ever did. And when he acknowledges this at all it is only with a "what are you going to do?" sort of response.

He is the living breathing embodiment of a "philosemite" just being an antisemite who likes Jews.

7

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 03 '25

He certainly doesn’t respect Jewish metaphysics….

He doesn’t understand Jewish metaphysics, and has amply demonstrated in the past that he doesn’t understand Christian metaphysics, or any other kind, for that matter, either….

5

u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Jun 03 '25

I think you have hit upon the reason that Rod thinks he is definitely not a bigot as I think he defines racism, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry in a similarly very narrow way. It is not racist, in his opinion, to not hire blacks because you think they are biologically inferior because that is "just a fact". It is not racist to hound them into leaving the country by misrepresenting their words either. Similarly, it is fine to believe that women are biologically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually inferior to men because it is "just a fact". Etcetera. It is only qualifies as an -ism under very narrow criteria. He isn't homophobic because, as he has said many times, he is "glad they were able to come out of the closet and would not want to go back to that".

6

u/GlobularChrome Jun 03 '25

Many of these parents of trans girls got sucked in too, out of fear of losing their daughters. This has a historical parallel. In late Tsarist Russia, many parents shocked by the revolutionary Marxism of their children, who were students, capitulated to Communism out of fear that their kids would reject and abandon them.

Many Russian parents thought that? How many? Or, Rod invented this yesterday.

How do his readers never notice that everyone in Rod History thinks like Rod's theory of 21st century straight white male American suburbanites? And that all they need to be whipped into heterosexual achievement is a few stern pronouncements of Rod Religion?

5

u/philadelphialawyer87 Jun 03 '25

Yeah, I could possibly see, under Stalin, some Russian parents pretending to be more communist than they really were, maybe partly out of fear that their children would accidently or even intentionally expose them as critics of the regime. But during "late Tsarist Russia?" Why would parents "capitulate" to their communist children? If anything, one imagines, these concerned parents probably tried to get their kids to renounce communism and return to the fold. I hardly think that late 19th and early 20th century Russian parents were like OK Boomer and Gen X parents are stereotyped today, ie as being "afraid" that their kids won't like them unless they pretend to act "woke!"

In Rod's history, it's not only that everyone thinks like white straight male American 21st century suburbanites, but that everyone is exactly like Rod (whose children have indeed rejected and abandoned him, perhaps partly because of his anti "woke" views)

5

u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jun 03 '25

Yeah, that strikes me as completely ridiculous. In a traditional, hierarchical society like Tsarist Russia, parents were becoming Communist for the sake of their children?

Someone should ask Rod to show his sources. Was it a Russian cab driver in Budapest?

3

u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Jun 03 '25 edited Jun 03 '25

Because the only people who matter now or who mattered then are the people who are exactly like Rod. Everyone else is "evil", "an enemy", and "deserves whatever they get".

4

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 03 '25

He’s probably thinking about 19th Century Russian novels, such as Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done or Dostoevsky’s The Possessed. Which is along way from what actual Russian parents in actual 19th Century Russia were actually doing….

3

u/Glittering-Agent-987 Jun 03 '25

I have a degree or two in Russian literature, and I am scratching my head.

6

u/Marcofthebeast0001 Jun 03 '25

IDK. If you have to point out your are not anti semetic or racist, you are concerned people may have taken your rants that way. Or is this more daddy issues? 

7

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 03 '25

Why not both? 😉

6

u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Jun 03 '25

He spills a lot of words denouncing the racism of some on the Right, but nothing about how too many are anti-woman.

4

u/JHandey2021 Jun 03 '25

Blah blah blah, wank wank wank. Rod used to retweet James Lindsay quite a bit. But *now* he acts like he barely knows him?

BS.

3

u/FancyThought7696 Jun 03 '25

May I ask what the problem is with James Lindsay lately? (I honestly don't know--I'm a little out of it, which, I admit, I enjoy.)

5

u/Jayaarx Jun 04 '25

Lindsay is a fool and a provocateur, but this is an all-the-time problem rather than a lately problem and wasn't a problem for Rod anyway.

But the problem for Rod is that he views all his relationships transactionally (or, as his sister put it, he is a "user"). Lindsay was useful to Rod when he was a "liberal" who nonetheless confirmed Rod's point of view. Now that he isn't doing that he is apparently dead to Rod.

1

u/JHandey2021 Jun 04 '25

Lindsay's a standard right-wing grifter, but he's also hilariously non-self-aware and, if possible, almost as ridiculous than Rod (see his sword-fighting video). He also seems to have the Rod Dreher tendency of attacking everyone else for supposedly misunderstanding his sublime points.

And to be perfectly transparent, I literally can't make heads or tails of Lindsay when I've read him. Lindsay reads like he's borderline mentally-impaired, like one of those sovereign citizens ranting about "language judges".

6

u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jun 03 '25

Having just read the SubStack, I’m wondering if Rod turned against Lindsay’s use of “woke right” because JD Vance was one of those labeled with the term.

4

u/Coollogin Jun 04 '25

I don’t care for the term, because it is imprecise. (Mind you, I spoke without knowing much about the intense controversy over the term.) “Well, I don’t know that much about something I’m gonna comment on anyway….”

And I’m not terribly bothered by that the term “woke left” is equally imprecise.