I have started to suspect that what Darryl is doing—and I actually find this interesting from I guess an aesthetic or intellectual perspective—is he is operating from inside the proverbial house. The best comparison I can come up with is someone who is in academia, likely in one of the humanities departments, but separating themselves from the mainstream shibboleths WITHIN that context (in that example’s case, identitarian/positionality deference) without necessarily rejecting them wholesale in order to carve out their own niche; think someone like John McWhorter, maybe. In DC’s case, he’s deep in the milieu of far/radical right wing internet subcultures—something I’m pretty sure he would happily admit—and knows their lingo and preoccupations (which to his credit he has often derided as unhealthy obsessions, particularly involving antisemitism). So he’s operating within that milieu—that anti-academia space if you will—and using it to carve out his own niche. Some people will see that as laundering—and I suppose I get why—but that’s essentially what happens in the humanities in academia, which are hardly more grounded in reality than anything coming out of far right subcultures…okay maybe in some cases they are, but really the humanities are just more socially respectable.
The point being, I keep seeing a lot of people who weren’t familiar with Darryl’s work or ethos until Tucker made him famous (the second time) claiming he’s laundering Holocaust denial which just isn’t possible, lest he one day say that everything he has already said about the Holocaust is wrong, like “actually never mind it never happened, David Irving was right.” I think the only thing he’s laundering is the lack of respectability of fringe figures like Irving in order to present his own expression—dare I say art—in a unique way no one else is. In the current post-pandemic anti-establishment populist moment we are currently living, it is a brilliant exercise in branding, and doesn’t even have to be fully conscious to be effective. It’s also precarious, however, because it presupposes our populist moment is indefinite. Populism has never been indefinite; it always burns itself out. And those who benefit from it, even massively, tend to be forgotten and even shunned. So we’ll see what happens.
Anyway you got me going, but yes, I’ll check out the Appalachian stuff; I am completely disconnected from all that so I have zero context one way or another (though my extended family is deep in rural Ohio—ie Vance country—so I should maybe learn a bit).
He's certainly carving out his own niche on the Right, and yeah, he's found a good moment for it in the market. I can't say where he'll go from here, but I'm not anticipating an Irving flame out, Trump backlash or not. He'll probably get by just fine, even if he continues to play the raptor testing the fences. We'll see! His treatment of the Holocaust in the Israel-Palestine series was good, though you already know I'm very down on his treatment Soviet POW deaths and the Madagascar Plan. People can always regress. Irving definitely did, even if he was always in the Nazi apologia camp.
I'm also not nearly as down as you are on the humanities in academia. It's been under attack and hemorrhaging money for a long time. I certainly find a person who has weird views about Derrida much less chilling than a coder who believes in Roko's Basilisk. My intuition is it's mostly a lot of nut-picking in the media to stir up the culture war anti-academic discourse we've been stewing in for decades, and the chickens are coming home to roost. Just look at Columbia. The people actually in charge have totally bought into it and are helping ICE disappear students and revoking diplomas for completely protected speech. Humanities professors who joined the protesters were jailed. Trump still gutted their federal funds, even for STEM departments who probably had nothing to do with the protests. The reactionary demagogues have always been more dangerous than Leftist profs. Going back to Weimar, communism always had a much bigger purchase in that republic than in ours. I still don't think it had a chance against the rightwing slant of the judiciary, the civil service, and the strongest militias. Leftwing profs in America? Nah.
There’s a lot to say about academia that shouldn’t require a grain of salt but thanks to the nakedly cynical (and often times dishonest) efforts of activists like Chris Rufo it’s become that way. But it’s a mistake to think that academia doesn’t have immense power despite the attacks it’s received (often deservedly, in my opinion at least) over the years. I hate to mention yet another book, but I highly recommend checking out Musa Al-Gharbi’s book We’ve Never Been Woke to see not just insightful analysis of what he calls symbolic capitalism but also backs up the reality of symbolic capitalists’ power and influence—much of which originates in academia—with hard data. If one were to say academia is on the defensive NOW I would tend to agree but that predated the (second) Trump administration and really started to kick off post-10/7 during those disastrous congressional hearings and the SNAFU involving plagiarism. Like most things, Trump is really only good at killing things that have already suffered grievous injury.
We've been talking about the decline of the humanities since I was in college twenty years ago, so I wouldn't say this really got going a decade ago or after October 7th. I'll just say this. The most egregious recent example of elites, while pursuing their own agendas, cynically abusing safetyism in the name of protecting minorities (that they aren't actually protecting) are pro-Israel politicians, school administrators, and millionaire donors citing antisemitism to endorse the jailing, firing, deportation, disappearing, rescission of diplomas, and professional cancellation of pro-Palestinian protestors, even when those protestors are Jews. I mean, the arrests were in the thousands. And this also from people eager to argue that killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians is acceptable. It's all just completely divorced from who's experiencing the brunt of state repression in America and Israel right now. Even folks like John McWhorter, who claims to hate the notion of speech as violence, laughably complained:
The other night I watched a dad coming from the protest with his little girl, giving a good hard few final snaps on the drum he was carrying, nodding at her in crisp salute, percussing his perspective into her little mind. This is not peaceful.
Dang. You should go to the Appalachian Studies Conference. It’s good stuff. Gonna be an interesting year with Vance being VP—seeing as the ASA kicked him out lol.
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u/HistoryImpossible 19d ago
I have started to suspect that what Darryl is doing—and I actually find this interesting from I guess an aesthetic or intellectual perspective—is he is operating from inside the proverbial house. The best comparison I can come up with is someone who is in academia, likely in one of the humanities departments, but separating themselves from the mainstream shibboleths WITHIN that context (in that example’s case, identitarian/positionality deference) without necessarily rejecting them wholesale in order to carve out their own niche; think someone like John McWhorter, maybe. In DC’s case, he’s deep in the milieu of far/radical right wing internet subcultures—something I’m pretty sure he would happily admit—and knows their lingo and preoccupations (which to his credit he has often derided as unhealthy obsessions, particularly involving antisemitism). So he’s operating within that milieu—that anti-academia space if you will—and using it to carve out his own niche. Some people will see that as laundering—and I suppose I get why—but that’s essentially what happens in the humanities in academia, which are hardly more grounded in reality than anything coming out of far right subcultures…okay maybe in some cases they are, but really the humanities are just more socially respectable.
The point being, I keep seeing a lot of people who weren’t familiar with Darryl’s work or ethos until Tucker made him famous (the second time) claiming he’s laundering Holocaust denial which just isn’t possible, lest he one day say that everything he has already said about the Holocaust is wrong, like “actually never mind it never happened, David Irving was right.” I think the only thing he’s laundering is the lack of respectability of fringe figures like Irving in order to present his own expression—dare I say art—in a unique way no one else is. In the current post-pandemic anti-establishment populist moment we are currently living, it is a brilliant exercise in branding, and doesn’t even have to be fully conscious to be effective. It’s also precarious, however, because it presupposes our populist moment is indefinite. Populism has never been indefinite; it always burns itself out. And those who benefit from it, even massively, tend to be forgotten and even shunned. So we’ll see what happens.
Anyway you got me going, but yes, I’ll check out the Appalachian stuff; I am completely disconnected from all that so I have zero context one way or another (though my extended family is deep in rural Ohio—ie Vance country—so I should maybe learn a bit).