American Conservatism Has a Digital Dilemma
American Conservatism Has a Digital Dilemma
As American conservatives limp toward another general election, almost certainly one in which they will be represented (for better or worse) by Donald Trump, it’s worth asking again what the contemporary conservative movement is. Beset with divisions—values voters vs. Barstools, classical liberals vs. the New Right—conservatism in 2024 has a variety of different flavors. There is conservative in the “Reads the Free Press and Jonathan Haidt” sense, and in the “Christian nationalist, I-command-the-women-to-be-silent” sense. Of course, these two tribes reflect a small percentage of the American right, and an even smaller percentage of the electorate. However, the tendency of the right’s most highly online, most fringe flank to press for higher visibility in the Trump era is not going away anytime soon.
Right now, conservatism has a digital dilemma. It’s facing a choice between a more conspiratorial, more combative, more acidic personality—one shaped in the image of the social Internet and its attention economy—and a more traditional, more incremental, more reasonable posture.
Two recent stories illustrate.