End-of-Year Notes on the Right
Season 3, Episode 56, Dec 31, 2025, 10:51 PM
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Correction: Around the 26 minute mark I speak of "Left" accidently. This was in relation to the Traditionalist right.
Join me for a cough medicine fueled rant about the right in 2025-2026.
The attempted central insight is that failure no longer weakens right movements. When policy or electoral politics fail it can be treated as proof that institutions are hostile and legitimacy is already gone. Once failure is processed this way, governing success matters less than maintaining narrative coherence and moral permission.
A second throughline is the collapse of institutional trust as a starting point rather than a conclusion. Because of this, correction can be difficult from left to right. This helps explain why fact-checking, moral denunciation and appeals to democratic norms often fail. The episode also explains how the right maintains cohesion without ideological agreement. Internal contradictions do not fracture the coalition because it is held together by shared stories rather than shared policy goals.
Finally, it traces the normalization of exception logic and the shift from belief to permission. What is being organized is not agreement but justification for dismissing institutions accepting harm and treating coercion as reasonable.
Apologies for the sniffles and happy New Year!
Website: https://www.therightpodcast.org/
Song: Behind Enemy Lines by Behind Enemy Lines
Join me for a cough medicine fueled rant about the right in 2025-2026.
The attempted central insight is that failure no longer weakens right movements. When policy or electoral politics fail it can be treated as proof that institutions are hostile and legitimacy is already gone. Once failure is processed this way, governing success matters less than maintaining narrative coherence and moral permission.
A second throughline is the collapse of institutional trust as a starting point rather than a conclusion. Because of this, correction can be difficult from left to right. This helps explain why fact-checking, moral denunciation and appeals to democratic norms often fail. The episode also explains how the right maintains cohesion without ideological agreement. Internal contradictions do not fracture the coalition because it is held together by shared stories rather than shared policy goals.
Finally, it traces the normalization of exception logic and the shift from belief to permission. What is being organized is not agreement but justification for dismissing institutions accepting harm and treating coercion as reasonable.
Apologies for the sniffles and happy New Year!
Website: https://www.therightpodcast.org/
Song: Behind Enemy Lines by Behind Enemy Lines