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There’s been a lot of talk lately about the “2016 energy” returning to Twitter/X. That was a magical time when all the factions of the non-establishment Right came together for a single purpose. The Alt Right, the Alt Lite, Right-wing libertarians, and millions of normie MAGA conservatives formed a unified front to get Trump elected. The famous post-election Murdoch Murdoch episode “The Great Meme War of 2016” memorialized this coalition. It shows various Internet and media personalities who took part in the struggle: The Right Stuff and Millennial Woes for the Alt Right, along with Alex Jones, Matt Cernovich, RamZPaul, James O’Keefe, Julian Assange, and a diverse array of others.

The Great Meme War of 2016 by Murdoch Murdoch

It was a magical time. Everyone was sharing each other’s content and everyone’s viewer numbers were climbing. People put aside their differences. All that mattered was that you were pro-Trump. We were trying to achieve the impossible, and we needed every man we could get.

Starting with the #BantheADL campaign and then accelerating since October 7, a similar unified front, this time against Zionism, has emerged on social media in recent months. It is now not uncommon to see X Spaces about the latest events in Gaza that include some combination of White Nationalists, anti-imperialist Leftists, Palestinian ethnic activists, and isolationist libertarians.

This is “2016 energy” on a far larger scale. For one, even with heavy hitters such as Jared Taylor, Counter-Currents, and others remaining banned, the dissident Right is nevertheless in a far stronger position on social media than we were in 2016. Ricky Vaughn was considered a Twitter god in 2016 because he gained 58,000 followers. It may seem hard to believe nowadays, but it was considered a major coup when Baked Alaska defected to the Alt Right in 2016 because he had 90,000 followers, which was an order of magnitude larger than any other Alt Right personality at the time. But there now are several White Nationalists with six-figure followings. If you look at figures who are adjacent to us, it gets into the millions. MAGA Communist Jackson Hinkle rode the anti-Zionist wave to a cool two million followers.

We also have much more elite support now than we did then. We have Elon Musk, who is sympathetic to at least some of our concerns. We also have a few members of the Con Inc. elite taking up our talking points, such as Candace Owens discussing Jews and Charlie Kirk dabbling in white identitarianism. In 2016, people were over the moon merely to have Tila Tequila on our side.

This new coalition is likewise far more global than the 2016 Trump coalition, which was primarily an American struggle. If anything, anti-Zionism is a far bigger deal in Europe for a variety of reasons (more Muslims, more Palestinians, more old-school Leftists). The global nature of this new coalition probably explains some of the astronomical growth in followers of some of social media personalities who have ridden the anti-Zionist wave.

Another difference between now and 2016 is that the MAGA front was an alliance across a specific sector of the Right, whereas the Anti-Zionist front spans the political spectrum. This is the aspect that I will focus on today.

Within the new anti-Zionist sphere, there is not so much an alliance as a non-aggression pact. The Right-wing anti-Zionists overlook the Left’s cringey takes on colonialism and Israel as a Nazi state. The Left in turn overlooks some of our spicier takes. Attempts at gatekeeping (“There is no place for anti-Semitism or Holocaust denial in the pro-Palestine movement!”) are regularly shouted down.

But how antifragile is this entente? The 2016 MAGA coalition started to break down almost immediately after Trump was elected. With its original mission having been accomplished, people felt less inclined to overlook things, as the infamous Hailgate incident at the National Policy Institute conference a week after Trump’s victory demonstrated. Is there some Hailgate-type event that could happen today that could cause this new pan-ideological kumbaya to come crashing down? Could it keep going after a ceasefire is declared in Gaza, for example?

Something happened last week which made me think about this. On March 8, a young woman walked into a building at Cambridge University and began spray-painting and slashing a 110-year-old painting of Lord Balfour that had been painted by a famous Hungarian portraitist. (Balfour issued the infamous Balfour Declaration on behalf of the British government in 1917 that first called for the establishment of a Zionist homeland in Palestine.) A Leftist group called Palestine Action claimed responsibility:

Palestine Action ruined a 1914 painting by Philip Alexius de László inside Trinity College, University of Cambridge of Lord Arthur James Balfour — the colonial administrator and signatory of the Balfour Declaration. An activist slashed the homage and sprayed the artwork with red paint, symbolizing the bloodshed of the Palestinian people since the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917.

 

Pro-Palestine protester defaces historic painting of Lord Balfour, a supporter a Jewish homeland

On an intellectual level, I know that this woman believed that she was striking a blow against Zionism. Yet, on a gut level I felt nothing but disgust. Her intent was to harm the Jewish power structure, but I found the idea of this woman being “on my side” revolting. She’s a lesser evil than the Zionists, but I felt a sudden longing for the day when that great evil has been dealt with and those of her ilk are next on the list. I’m an instinctive pragmatist, but at some point principles have to kick in. The idea of destroying art, particularly art of historic value, is unconscionable to me. Whatever you may think of Lord Balfour, he was part of our story as a people. That painting should be in a museum with a plaque underneath that reads, “This is the dick who sold out to the Jews.”

Many on the Right were similarly appalled. One such tweet read:

However much a white Westerner may justly despise the state of Israel for its political & military misdeeds, it is important to remember that Palestinians also despise you & your history, and that they — and their filthy leftist proxies — are vituperative, anti-civilizational scum.

However much a white Westerner may justly despise the state of Israel for its political & military misdeeds, it is important to remember that Palestinians also despise you & your history, and that they—and their filthy leftist proxies—are vituperative, anti-civilisational scum. https://t.co/kKe2g68JNq

— John Dee (@iohndee) March 8, 2024

The only individual on the dissident Right who I know of that praised the action was Mike Enoch:

Lord Balfour can get fucked and I laughed when his portrait was shredded.

Lord Balfour can get fucked and I laughed when his portrait was shredded.

— ThunderStruck ⚡ (@StrukkThunder) March 9, 2024

Last weekend there was an interesting exchange between Keith Woods and Michael Tracy over the importance of the Jewish lobby. Michael Tracy believes that the reason most of our political class is Zionist is either out of genuine conviction or else cynical careerism, and that this has played a large role in driving events. Tracy is wrong, but I’ve always had the feeling that he’s a good-faith actor, and he puts up a valiant, albeit futile, defense against Woods.

So your explanation is it’s a combination of donors and DC think tanks who are part of an organised Jewish lobby create incentives to be pro-Israel, and true believing evangelicals who are fervently pro-Israel. In that case, we agree. But one of these is really in the drivers…

— Keith Woods (@KeithWoodsYT) March 10, 2024

> “So your explanation is it’s a combination of donors and DC think tanks who are part of an organised Jewish lobby create incentives to be pro-Israel, and true believing evangelicals who are fervently pro-Israel. In that case, we agree. But one of these is really in the drivers…

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) March 10, 2024

Well, in your original tweet you emphasised the agency and ambition of pro Israel non-Jews who drive these policies. If that ambition is driven by incentives created by the Jewish lobby, this is obviously more relevant to any discussion of the issue – even if all the evangelicals… pic.twitter.com/L3MVIb0tQg

— Keith Woods (@KeithWoodsYT) March 10, 2024

This exchange shows where some of the fault lines in the anti-Zionist coalition are. When it comes to “based Leftists,” one is eternally frustrated that they can come so close to the truth but refuse to take the last step. It has been said that it is harder to get high-IQ people to recognize their own errors, because their brains are capable of thinking up more and more rationalizations for their errors. There may very well come a time, possibly in the near future, when anti-Zionism will become so mainstream that when we try to persuade such people that the problem isn’t simply Zionism, but Jewish power, some of our ostensible allies will not be keen to go along with it.

There are other scenarios I can think of. What if a pro-Palestine terrorist attack occurs in the West that has a high white body count? Aaron Bushnell setting himself on fire proved that there are Leftists who feel passionately enough about this issue to throw their own lives away for it. If a pro-Palestine Brenton Tarrant shot a number of white people at random in retaliation for settler colonialism, it would certainly polarize the anti-Zionist movement.

It could also be that the breakdown of the anti-Zionist coalition might not occur due to Left/Right infighting but due to infighting on the Left and Right. One thing that is certain is that very soon you will see a lot of infighting on the Left over whether or not to support Genocide Joe in the election in order to keep Adolf Trump out. There will also be parallel debates on the Right over what to do about Zion Don, and these debates will use up a lot of the momentum, particularly for Americans.

I don’t wish to black-pill anyone, but I’ve been in this scene long enough to know that one should recognize when one is in a golden age. The history of the dissident Right is a story of booms and busts. There was a Trump boom in 2016, but after the election it quickly died down. In 2018, there was the Internet Bloodsports boom on YouTube, and then it was ended by censorship. And there was a boom in the Summer of Floyd in 2020, when everyone on the dissident Right was getting huge viewer numbers.

Right now we are once again in a boom, but it won’t last forever. The Gaza War will eventually end, one way or another. Other cause célèbres will emerge and it won’t be all Jews, all the time anymore. Censorship could likewise come back. The Zionists could be playing a long game, after all. Censoring anti-Zionists in the middle of a Zionist war is bound to raise eyebrows, but doing so after a ceasefire might not raise as much alarm.

We shall cross all these bridges when we get to them, but you should enjoy these good times while they are rolling.