Of Political Horseshoes and Ideological Contagion

A Former Leftist’s Warning to the Right

The Vibe Shift and Its Discontents

There was a moment—just before the last U.S. election—when I suspected that if enough people voted, Donald Trump might actually win. Not because the polls said so (they didn’t). Not because the media hinted at it (they wouldn’t dare). But because I live on the internet. And the internet, culturally and politically, had undergone a cultural pivot. You could feel it in the memes, in the comedy, in the tone of frustration and irreverence that had curdled into something unambiguously right-leaning.

I spent years politically aligned with the left. What pulled me in were its promises—justice, progress, moral clarity. But what I found instead was a kind of political theatre: empty slogans, cultish liturgies, and a relentless hunt for heretics. The gap between the rhetoric and the reality became impossible to ignore. That’s what drove me away.

And now, watching the right ride its own cultural high, I see the same patterns re-emerging. The left had overplayed its hand: the lockdowns, the DEI bureaucracy, the censorship. And in reaction, the pendulum swung. Hard.

Of course, now conservatives like me find ourselves in the unfamiliar position of celebration. After years in the wilderness, we've returned to something resembling cultural power, or at least more than in decades. We seized the meme-space, infiltrated comedy, made inroads in media. The temptation is to luxuriate in this triumph—to mock our opponents' hand-wringing hysteria, to revel in their overwrought displays of despair. After all, isn't that precisely what they did to us?

But celebration can blind us to a far more insidious threat: the possibility that in our moment of triumph, we might succumb to the very pathologies we've spent decades criticizing in our opponents.

Because here’s the unpleasant truth: when the tide rises, it lifts all boats—including those carrying contraband. The same parasitic mind virus we were trying to escape seems to be trying to smuggle itself back into the culture.

For what if the ideological contagion—that memetic pathology often termed the "woke mind virus"—is not merely a left-wing phenomenon but a universal susceptibility? What if the same intellectual deterioration we've observed on the left is now metastasizing on the right, with symptoms that look different but produce identical civilizational decay?

The political horseshoe, a metaphor suggesting extremes of left and right bend toward each other, increasingly appears less metaphor and more diagnosis. What we’re witnessing is not imitation, but convergence: a parallel evolution in which the right begins to exhibit the same pathologies it once condemned.

Revisionism: From 1619 to 1939

On the progressive side, we got the 1619 Project, a dazzling cocktail of bad history and worse politics, designed to convince schoolchildren that America’s true founding principle was slavery. Its author, Nikole Hannah-Jones, stated that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery.

Historians have spent years criticizing the project—an exercise in historical fabrication disguised as "reframing." They've documented its factual errors, its methodological failings, its transparent attempt to rewrite American history as nothing but a chronicle of racial oppression. The New York Times' decision to publish this activist fantasy as authoritative history represented one of the most egregious examples of institutional capture by ideological zealots.

How depressing, then, to witness the right developing its own cottage industry of historical revisionism. Take Darryl Cooper, host of the "MartyrMade" podcast, who has devoted considerable energy to rehabilitating Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Cooper's revisionism operates through the same mechanisms as Hannah-Jones': selective evidence, motivated reasoning, and the flattening of complex historical events into simplistic morality tales. Where Hannah-Jones sees only racial oppression, Cooper sees only geopolitical victimization of Germany.

In a particularly egregious episode on Tucker Carlson’s show, Cooper insisted that Hitler "made sincere peace offers" and was "open to negotiation." You see, the Germans were provoked into slaughtering six million Jews. As if antisemitism were a rational response to Versailles, rather than a theological obsession Hitler wrote about before Versailles.

This is the sort of historical gymnastics that would be instantly ridiculed if used to whitewash American slavery. Yet Cooper has developed a substantial audience among some online right-wing thinkers. The effect is identical to the 1619 Project: the corruption of historical understanding in service of contemporary political narratives.

I've long feared that progressive assaults on academic expertise would eventually kill the credibility of institutions (which it has). What I didn't anticipate was how eagerly segments of the right would participate in the execution. History always seems to be the first discipline sacrificed on the altar of partisan convenience.

The New York Times 1619 Project and Daryl Cooper’s Martyr Made Podcast

The Death of Expertise: Trust Nobody, Especially If They Know Things

Once upon a time, the left worshiped credentials. They had a Pavlovian reflexive genuflection to Ivy League degrees, white coats and tenure. Then COVID happened, and we learned that most of these institutions were populated by moral cowards and bureaucratic ideologues. And so the right, understandably, turned skeptical. But from skepticism, I fear we’re sliding into something darker: extreme anti-credentialism.

Suddenly expertise itself has become suspect. This isn't the healthy skepticism toward institutional capture that conservatives might justifiably harbour. Rather, it's the wholesale dismissal of specialized knowledge in favour of what amounts to epistemological populism: "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

No figure better embodies this tendency than comedian-turned-political commentator Dave Smith. During his much-discussed debate with Douglas Murray on Joe Rogan's podcast, Smith displayed the intellectual habits of a sophomore who's just discovered libertarianism. When challenged on his simplistic understanding of foreign policy, Smith retreated to conspiratorial innuendo and the suggestion that Murray’s years of on-the-ground reporting from war zones and flashpoints across the Middle East somehow made him less objective—too informed, too experienced, too compromised by reality.

This is the expertise paradox: the left demands deference to credentials without scrutiny of arguments, while segments of the right reject expertise altogether, preferring the comfortable simplifications of ideological purity. Both approaches render impossible the kind of reasoned deliberation upon which any functioning polity depends.

The right's version of this pathology is particularly disappointing because conservatives have traditionally understood that knowledge accumulates across generations—that tradition itself represents a form of transmitted wisdom. The new right-wing antipathy toward expertise represents not just an epistemological error but a betrayal of conservatism's intellectual foundations.

Consider, too, the curious double standard on display in Joe Rogan’s guest list. His critics aren’t entirely wrong to point out that he has platformed voices deeply sympathetic to Hamas and openly hostile to Israel—guests who’ve pushed narratives so untethered from historical reality, they make Chomsky look like Churchill. But to be fair, Rogan has also hosted a number of strong pro-Israel voices over the years—Gad Saad, Ben Shapiro, Bari Weiss, Jordan Peterson, and Douglas Murray among them. He’s not a propagandist; he’s a populist. He’s open to everyone—until, apparently, the topic of “trusting experts” comes up.

Because here’s the paradox: in MMA, Rogan is a gatekeeper. He’s an expert himself, and he knows the difference between a black belt and a charlatan. That’s why you won’t see him hosting frauds exposed by channels like McDojoLife—he values expertise, real credentials, hard-earned experience. Yet when Douglas Murray pressed him on the difference between informed commentary and ideological ranting—when the stakes were geopolitical, not athletic—Rogan seemed to bristled at the distinction. It’s as if the more lethal the topic, the lower the standards.

This blind spot isn’t just Rogan’s (who I actually admire)—it’s emblematic of a broader trend in which populist skepticism slides into anti-knowledge nihilism. When we abandon standards of competence in matters of war and state, while enforcing them in cage fighting, we reveal what we really value—and what we’re willing to risk.

The Critique-Proof Ideologue

Perhaps the most telling symptom of ideological contagion is the development of immune responses against criticism. The left's version is familiar: any critique of progressive orthodoxy must originate in some form of bigotry—racism, sexism, transphobia, Islamophobia, and so forth. The critic's arguments need never be addressed; their motivations have been preemptively delegitimized.

The right has now developed its own repertoire of deflections. Challenge Tucker Carlson’s poetic praise of Russian subway stations and grocery prices—as if interior design and cabbage costs are reasonable trade-offs for authoritarianism and gulags—and you're branded an "elitist" disconnected from real Americans. Question Candace Owens' increasingly unhinged commentary on Jewish influence, and you become a "globalist" or "neocon." The words differ, but the function is identical. It’s historical illiteracy disguised as contrarian flair.

This allergy to criticism manifests in a peculiar sort of fragility. The same voices who mock campus "snowflakes" melt into puddles the moment their own views are questioned. When Douglas Murray exposed the fact that Dave Smith had never been to Ukraine or Israel, a chorus of libertarian fans took to social media to cry “gatekeeping” and “elitism,” accusing Murray of arguing from authority, of being part of the establishment, of “silencing” dissent—as though exposing contradictions and calling bullshit on one’s argument is the same thing as censorship. This isn’t the posture of brave truth-seekers. It’s emotional infantilism masquerading as political rebellion.

The tragedy is that genuine conservative thought thrives on robust criticism. Conservative thinkers like Edmund Burke and Roger Scruton understood that conservatism at its best represents not dogmatic adherence to a program but a disposition toward reality—a disposition that requires constant refinement through engagement with opposing views. When segments of the right adopt the left's habit of immunizing themselves against criticism, they abandon this tradition in favour of something much more primitive: tribal signalling masquerading as political thought.

Noam Chomsky and Tucker Carlson increasingly converging.

America the Villain: The New Right's Chomskyan Turn

Perhaps the most grotesque manifestation of the horseshoe is this: the right now sounds like Noam Chomsky with a Fox News filter.

For decades, Noam Chomsky has served as intellectual godfather to a particular strand of left-wing thought that views America as the primary source of global evil—a hyperpower whose influence inevitably corrupts, whose motives are irredeemably suspect, and whose actions require not just criticism but condemnation. This Chomskyan analysis once marked the boundary between mainstream liberalism and its radical fringe.

Now, astonishingly, segments of the so-called nationalist right are parroting the very same postures. Watch Tucker Carlson sit across from Vladimir Putin and absorb, with wide-eyed credulity, a lecture about how NATO expansion forced Russia to invade Ukraine. Listen to him fawn over the Qatari monarchy—a regime that outlaws homosexuality and finances terrorists—as if he were reviewing a new Italian wine bar.

Blame America first. Always. Every war is her fault. Every enemy is only angry because of her arrogance. This is the foreign policy of adolescent self-loathing, just now adopted by the very people who once chanted “U-S-A!”

And here’s the real danger: if America retreats from the world stage—if it buys into the left’s or right’s Chomskyan self-loathing and pulls back from its role as guarantor of global order—something else will fill the vacuum. And it won’t be liberal democracies. It will be China, Russia, Iran. The world will not become more peaceful in America’s absence. It will become more savage, more authoritarian, more dangerous. American power is not always virtuous, but it is often the only thing standing between civilization and the abyss.

This turn transforms America from the "last, best hope of earth" into just another empire pursuing naked self-interest—or worse, a puppet state manipulated by shadowy global forces.

Which brings us, inevitably, to the question of antisemitism.

The Antisemitic Convergence

If the political horseshoe needed final confirmation, one need look no further than the disturbing renaissance of antisemitism across the ideological spectrum. On the left, we find “Squad” members like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, whose grotesque obsession with Israel manifests in a fetish for Palestinian “resistance”—even when that resistance involves raping women and burning children alive. They chant “From the River to the Sea” and “Intifada,” pretending it’s about liberation, not liquidation. The rot extends beyond Congress: leaders of Black Lives Matter glorified Hamas attacks, while early organizers of the Women’s March aligned themselves with open antisemites like Louis Farrakhan.

And now, we see the same thing mirrored on the right. Figures like Candace Owens and Jackson Hinkle deploy remarkably similar tropes beneath a thin veneer of "just asking questions" about Jewish influence.

Take Ian Carroll, the social media figure host of "The Ian Carroll Show" who bills himself as an “independent researcher” and has repeatedly insinuated that Jewish financial interests control American politics. Or consider Candace Owens' bizarre fixation on the Rothschilds and her increasingly unsubtle commentary on "who controls the media." These are not dog whistles so much as foghorns—audible to anyone paying attention.

The parallels with left-wing antisemitism are impossible to ignore. Both versions traffic in conspiracy theories about Jewish power. Both position Jews as puppet masters manipulating events from the shadows. Both employ the rhetorical strategy of plausible deniability—"I'm not talking about Jews, just Zionists/globalists/international finance." And both reveal a fundamental failure of moral and intellectual seriousness.

What makes right-wing antisemitism particularly galling is its betrayal of conservatism's philosophical foundations. Conservatism properly understood stands against precisely the kind of conspiratorial thinking, historical amnesia, and moral relativism that antisemitism requires. When conservatives embrace or excuse antisemitism, they don't merely adopt a deplorable prejudice—they undermine the very principles that distinguish conservatism from its ideological competitors.

The virus doesn’t care which host it uses. The hatred is old, but it has found new code.

The Libertarian Confusion

This brings us to a central confusion within contemporary right-wing thought: the relationship between conservatism and libertarianism. Libertarianism's conception of freedom as absence of constraint has exercised increasing influence over segments of the American right, creating a hybrid ideology that retains conservatism's cultural aesthetics while adopting libertarianism's impoverished understanding of liberty.

It is here that we find the core philosophical divergence between the right and those who merely are considered right-adjacent.

Libertarians argue for freedom as an end in itself. A right to do whatever you like, so long as you don’t punch someone or steal their wallet. Conservatives, by contrast, understand something deeper, something truer: that liberty is only meaningful if it is ordered toward the good.

This distinction finds perfect expression in the biblical formulation from Exodus: “Let my people go,” God says. But He does not stop there. “Let my people go so that they may worship me in the desert.” Not freedom for self-expression. Not liberation for Netflix and OnlyFans. Freedom to fulfill a higher purpose. Freedom to obey a higher law.

As Lord Acton put it: “Liberty is not the freedom to do what we like, but the right to do what we ought.” And C.S. Lewis, always the sharpest knife in the drawer, wrote: “The lost enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded.”

This is the difference: the libertarian sees restraint as oppression. The conservative sees restraint as discipline. The libertarian exalts the individual. The conservative orders the soul.

To be clear, libertarianism at its best offers valuable insights. Figures like John Stossel, Nick Gillespie, and the team at Reason magazine have made substantive contributions to policy debates. Milton Friedman's defence of market mechanisms transformed economic understanding. But these thinkers engage with reality's complexities rather than retreating to doctrinal purity when confronted with difficult cases.

But then there’s Dave Smith. And here I must confess: perhaps the libertarians are not sending their best.

Dave Smith’s Pacifist Contradictions

Much has already been said about Smith’s encounter with Douglas Murray on Joe Rogan’s podcast, so I won’t linger there. Instead, let’s turn to his appearance on Lex Fridman’s show, where Smith’s anti-war stance was presented with the confidence of a moral philosopher and the coherence of a stoner debating.

Smith begins with a familiar libertarian moral absolutism: You may never kill an innocent person. Not ever. Not even in war. He rejects utilitarian calculations outright—no civilian-to-combatant ratios, no “necessary evil” exceptions. The mere presence of innocent casualties, he insists, renders any military action morally indefensible.

Yet this absolutism is oddly elastic. When it comes to Ukraine, Smith is all for defence: they have borders, after all, and Russia breached them. But when Hamas—an internationally designated terrorist organization and the elected government of Gaza—launches a surprise invasion into Israel, murdering, raping, and burning civilians alive, suddenly the calculus changes.

As he told Lex Fridman:

“October 7 happened. We can all agree this was, like, a horrific tragedy and, you know, an indefensible act of terrorism… Okay, was this the biggest security failure in Israeli history? Okay, then put a bunch more men at that fence.”

It’s a logic so broken it practically begs to be mocked. Imagine a man whose home is invaded, whose family is slaughtered—and the proposed solution is to install a better lock. That’s not moral clarity. That’s moral cowardice cosplaying as consistency.

The contradiction couldn’t be more glaring: Smith believes war is just when Russia crosses a border—but unjust when Hamas crosses a border. He sees Ukraine’s territorial integrity as sacred, but Israel’s as negotiable. Why? Because in the end, Smith isn’t applying a coherent moral framework. He’s applying vibes. Libertarian vibes. Podcast-hosting vibes. Consequence-dodging vibes.

Yes, war should be avoided whenever possible, but some wars must be fought. And more importantly, some wars must be won. A world in which evil is allowed to flourish because the moral high ground has been paved over with cowardice is not a world worth preserving—it’s a waiting room for the next atrocity.

The Feature and the Bug

The right's susceptibility to ideological contagion creates a peculiar dynamic: its greatest weakness may also be its greatest strength. Unlike the left, which maintains remarkable message discipline despite internal disagreements, the right conducts its disputes in public—often brutally so.

When Candace Owens ventures into antisemitic territory, former friends employers like Dennis Prager and others forcefully condemn her statements. When Ian Carroll or Daryl Cooper promote conspiracy theories or engage in historical revisionism, they face substantial criticism from within right-leaning circles. The Dave Smith-Douglas Murray debate occurred precisely because the right hasn't settled on a unified foreign policy vision.

This openness to internal critique—this willingness to engage in fratricidal conflict over first principles—may represent the right's best defence against full ideological capture. It creates an environment where bad ideas face resistance before they can become orthodoxy.

Contrast this with the left's handling of antisemitism among its own, particularly from "Squad" members. Rather than forthright condemnation, we witness tortured explanations, postmodern contextualizations, and outright denials—all to maintain the façade of unity. The result is the normalization of bigotry within progressive circles.

Yet this same willingness to engage in internal combat creates significant strategic disadvantages. While the left presents a unified front on election day despite internal tensions, the right's factionalism can depress turnout and create openings for opponents. The never-ending conflicts between national conservatives, libertarians, traditional conservatives, and populists consume energy that might otherwise be directed toward shared objectives.

This is the right's paradox: the mechanisms that might prevent ideological capture also undermine political effectiveness. The question becomes whether it's possible to maintain intellectual hygiene without sacrificing strategic cohesion—to be self-critical without being self-defeating.

Guarding Against Contagion

As conservatives celebrate electoral victory and cultural resurgence, our greatest challenge may be resisting the temptations that come with ascendancy. The ideological pathologies I've described—historical revisionism, anti-intellectualism, critique-avoidance, Chomskyan America-hatred, antisemitism, and conceptual confusion about liberty—represent not just political errors but intellectual and moral failures.

The ideological contagion spreading through segments of the right doesn't represent a "woke" right so much as a post-truth right—a movement that retains conservative aesthetics while abandoning conservative epistemology. It mimics the left not in content but in structure: the same pattern of motivated reasoning, the same hostility to inconvenient facts, the same preference for narrative over reality, only with our side’s branding.

This is our task: to resist not only the left’s madness but our own. To fight the parasites within as well as the tyrants without. To remember that true conservatism is not about owning the libs, but about conserving the good, the true, and the beautiful.

If we fail, we will have won the culture war only to lose the civilization.