In Brief: When the Fringe Becomes the Majority
Leftists dismiss people they don’t like as “fringe,” but what if that’s not even remotely true?
It’s an unfortunate “feature” of the Left to attack and discredit opponents rather than bother with inconvenient things like arguing about actual ideas. Grayson Quay noticed that pattern.
We saw it when Joker made over a billion dollars at the box office, despite numerous reviews and think pieces assuring us that everyone who enjoyed it was a dangerous alt-right incel.
We saw it most clearly in 2016 and again in 2020 when the tens of millions of Americans who voted for Donald Trump were uniformly smeared as white supremacists. To suggest any other motive was unacceptable. Racists! All of them!
We saw it twice in the past week.
The first of those instances is related to the ongoing Freedom Convoy protest in Canada. More on that later.
The other was when we were subjected to yet another round of opinion pieces that painted Joe Rogan and his listeners — who, like Trump’s voters, number in the tens of millions — as a bunch of right-wing crazies.
This is especially insane since, as I argued a few weeks ago, Joe Rogan is almost uncannily representative of the median American male. He idolizes entrepreneurs but doesn’t trust big corporations. He likes smoking weed. He enjoys MMA fights. He’s not particularly interested in organized religion. Big Tarantino fan. Slightly crass sense of humor. Live-and-let-live on social issues but uncomfortable with the whole trans kids thing. Open to discussing almost anything with almost anyone.
That, for many of Rogan’s critics, is his most dangerous quality: he sees nothing wrong with talking to Bernie Sanders, Ben Shapiro, and even Alex Jones. It’s because of his catholicity that he must be dismissed. Anyone who refuses to remain within the manufactured consensus of acceptable discourse is a threat.
The cult-like fringe, as it turns out, seems to be the group that wants to cancel certain people and call them fringe. As Quay put it, “When your ‘fringe’ has gotten that big, it’s probably time to get a new carpet.”
So what about the Canadian truckers?
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — who, unlike James II and VII, has managed to flee without effectively abdicating — said the convoy was made up of a “small fringe” holding “unacceptable views.” In response, the protesters adopted “We the Fringe” as their slogan.
Of course, we don’t actually know how “fringe” the trucker protest is. Solid estimates of the numbers of trucks and people involved are hard to come by. I also can’t find a decent poll on how many Canadians actually back the Freedom Convoy, though the absence of polling suggests that the people who commission and conduct polls are afraid they might not like the results.
Quay concludes with a look at the smoke and mirrors of it all.
Of course, in the fake mainstream, to be apolitical is to agree with the fake mainstream. They decide what normalcy, morality, and even sanity look like. Everything else is fringe.
Some people believe this lie and conform to it. Others perceive the lie and reject it. It’ll be interesting to see which group wins.
