The years 2019 and 2020 rocketed through the American political landscape, marking a shift not of populations but ideologies—from a once-dominant “young left” to a smaller but still voraciously clout-chasing “dissident right.” This was no mere drift on the winds of change but a headfirst dive into the abyss, a calculated somersault driven by style, opportunism, and the cunning exploitation of groupchat and societal meltdowns. As Covid-19 carved swathes forced parents and children into an uneasy all-day embrace and white-collar millennials to subsist on pandemic unemployment assistance-subsidized Instacart and UberEats orders in closet-sized apartments, as cities flared with the fires of protests post-George Floyd, and as the 2020 elections reached unprecedented (“un-presidented!” joked the hot college comedian, who was wanted in all 50 states for attempting to cause laughter) levels of conspiratorial fervor, a perfect storm brewed—one that poured the old wine of public discourse and personal identity into unrecognizable new BPA-free containers.
This ideological shuffle didn't just pop out of thin air, and it wasn't the brainchild of spontaneous philosophical epiphanies. Instead, it was a meticulously choreographed dance undertaken by a brigade of career-minded provocateurs, savvy surfers of the digital “takeconomy” who knew that the left take-space was overproduced, even if the ranks of our electricians and operating engineers remain as thin as an Ozempic waistline. Their migration was less about seeking some elusive truth and more about hunting down marketability and visibility in the chaos. Mainstream narratives, trudging along with the old horse and buggy of "a conservative is just a liberal mugged by reality," fail to capture the nuances of this ideological tango. Think tanks and thought leaders from the badly outnumbered ranks of right-wing non-governmental institutions like the Claremont Institute and American Greatness didn't just watch from the sidelines—they rolled out the red carpet, offering new places to post for those jaded by a left that no longer felt like a community of “frens” who’d help them grow their personal brands.
As the political tides turned from 2019 to 2020, another curious dynamic was unfolding, often overlooked yet critical in understanding the ideological reshuffling of the period. The right-wing media ecosystem, “always already” something of a disaster-piece, was increasingly dominated by the various imbeciles on the MyPillow guy’s “Frank” media platform (check out “The Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson”; holy cow) and other dim-bulb commentators such as Jack Posobiec and Tim Pool—running on fumes and spiraling into a vortex of low-quality, high-volume misinformation. This descent into intellectual mediocrity was not just noted but lamented by more elitist thinkers like “IQ realist” Richard Hanania, who has repeatedly pointed out an uncomfortable truth: the right, or at least a significant segment of it, suffers from a trillion-dollar brainpower deficit.
This intellectual drought was not a new phenomenon but rather the culmination of a decades-long trajectory set in motion during the heydays of Rush Limbaugh and Bob Grant that now seem positively balmy in retrospect, up there with the grand old days of “Good Queen Bess” and so on. Working from the foundation they laid, the shaky edifice that is conservative media had slowly grown into an echo chamber of repetitive, brain-dead talk radio, a relentless feedback loop that went into overdrive after the advent of social media, always prioritizing outrage and entertainment (knockout game footage, anybody?) over substantive discussion. The intellectual underpinnings that had once bolstered conservative thought back when Kennedy kids like Daniel Patrick Moynihan were “fellow traveling” in Nixon’s administration and William F. Buckley was running for mayor of New York City were now being hollowed out by a relentless drive for ratings and clicks.
But make no mistake—this wasn’t just a quest for a new ideological zip code. It was a clear-cut career maneuver from the very first post about the excesses of “Covid safetyism” or some similar thing. These new dissident-right converts, forged in the crucible of posting and recognizing a golden opportunity amid the pandemonium of pandemics and street protests, jumped ship with a pirate's greed for plunder. New platforms like Compact emerged as ideological catwalks, where these defectors strutted their stuff, their left-wing fervor now cunningly repackaged into 500-word essays from a rightist brand that was supposed to be all the rage (it wasn’t, but hundreds and perhaps even thousands are reading it!). This wasn’t mere change—it was a theatrical production, with every step from left to right staged and monetized to the last beat.
In this marketplace of ideas, authenticity was auctioned off to the highest bidder ($200 a post on the low end, $800 near the pinnacle) of visibility. The loudest of these ideological turncoats brandished the rhetoric of existential doom—once a staple of the far-left—as their newest arsenal, now repurposed with a right-wing twist. "They want people like us dead," they declared, parroting the very battle cries they once opposed, now retooled for maximum impact. This dance of mirrored ideologies wasn’t just a reflection of philosophical hypocrisy but a more cynical play for power in the digital coliseum. It also led a bunch of dumbo observers to claim “it’s all one thing”—i.e., leftism.
The 2019-2020 ideological exodus from left to right amidst the posting class highlights a stark truth about the modern political and media landscape: it's less about the solid bedrock of beliefs and more about the shifting sands of strategic positioning, where one is always trying to “get theirs” before they “get got.” This great realignment of posters signals a broader trend wherein ideological loyalties are traded in like old cars, replaced by a relentless chase for relevance and resonance across a splintered public square. This era isn't just another chapter of political transformation; it's a blaring exposé on the rise of a new breed of public intellectual—one part provocateur, one part entrepreneur, and 100 percent cynical creature born of the digital derangement that occurs after spending 18 hours a day posting in groupchats and doomscrolling one’s feed.
As the pixie dust settles on this tumultuous phase, the left-to-right panic of these years stands not merely as a footnote in political history but as another critical case study of the shifting dynamics of power, media, and identity in the age of social media. It serves as a dismaying reminder of the intoxicating mix of online addiction, twitter-brained thinking, penny-ante opportunism, and stay-in-bed ambition that fuels much of today's political discourse. In this arena, the line between genuine ideological commitment and strategic careerism isn't just blurred—it’s obliterated. That, my “frens,” is all one thing.
