Outrage Is Not a Moral Vision: Lauren Southern's Regret
I read Lauren Southern’s book, This is Not Real Life, with much interest. In it, she chronicles the behind-the-scenes experiences that she had in the populist right movement. Those who have been watching from the outside world should be familiar with the characters: Ezra Levant, Milo Yiannopoulos, Caolan Robertson and George Llewelyn-John, Tommy Robinson, and even Andrew Tate.
I love memoirs and autobiographies, but I’ve often been mindful of the warning that if you don’t dislike the author by the end of one, then it wasn’t honest. I never developed a dislike of Lauren in reading her book, but it’s clear that she did. Her pages bleed with regret at how she handled both small and large events in her history.
Somehow, her past seems more like our past than a merely solitary adventure. The Right, to use a broad term, has been through a series of identity crises over the past 20 years—phases, if you will, as it tries to define itself by something other than the rejection of the latest propulsion toward lunacy.
We cheered when Milo went on the Dangerous Faggot Tour, warning about the perils of Islam and the need to defend the West while wearing a tight black leather outfit and bragging about his homosexual exploits. Should we? Or perhaps you remember when Gavin McInnes shoved an object up his rectum on camera in between lectures about the family unit, presumably for view counts. It didn’t seem to hurt his brand. It wasn’t merely that these figures behaved grotesquely; it was that we rewarded them for it.
Broadly, what happened throughout the populist right on camera was shadowed off-camera by even worse exploits. “Conservatism” had become a money-making brand, and it was much more interested in being outrageous (in a different way from the Left) than it was about being good.
In many ways, Lauren’s exposé therefore shouldn’t surprise us. But what it does show is the level of impact on those media figures themselves. They are affected physiologically and psychologically by the rapid pace of fame in the modern world. The effect of having a video reach 2 million views overnight, with tens of thousands of comments from strangers, will forever be unknown to most of us. But it’s not healthy, and we certainly were not made for that kind of adulation (or even criticism). Thus, anyone who meaningfully enters that world gets addicted to adrenaline and dopamine, and they chase the same audience recognition with every new production. They lose themselves in the entertainment, and they become a type of product that the populace demands more of. Because they are dehumanized as commodities, audience members become livid when the product doesn’t act as expected, such as when J.K. Rowling released books in a different genre (even though she used a pseudonym).
As members of the mob act like deranged puppeteers and the performer is reduced to a commodity who is addicted to the attention, few stop to wonder what is conservative about it all. Or even, what’s human about it?
Politics on the right has settled down a little, perhaps because so many of its heroes have been sullied, or simply because of who the President is this term. Whatever the reason, we would do well to take the quieter season to reflect on what makes a movement good, rather than merely entertaining. If behind the scenes, there are deviant parties with rampant drug use, the end result can only be dire. An outcome will reflect its production.
In more recent years, performers have been rewarded for making the most outrageous statements, regardless of truth or decency. Tucker Carlson has given a platform to Andrew Tate (after he was credibly accused of rape and human trafficking) and Nick Fuentes (after he said that rape wasn’t a big deal and defended a variety of dictators). Before the next political fever unfolds, we ought to consider what we encourage, and the cost of reducing people into spectacles before watching their predictable implosion.
If we can center our dreams for a civilization on Christ—not as a token, slogan, or figurehead, but as a person, then perhaps we can build a civilization that prizes those He came to redeem.
Lauren’s sins and regrets are not unique, but the twins of repentance and forgiveness make our faith stand apart. It’s something that sounds good on paper, especially when it applies to us, but hurts in practice, when it’s time for us to forgive as we’ve been forgiven. Without this ethos, this centering on Christ, we will merely switch out one deranged, morally unscrupulous group for another, such that we fail even in victory.
Psst. If you enjoyed this, you can read more of my book reviews.
I found this very difficult to understand and accept. I suppose it is a generational thing and the fact that I do not understand the 'Intellectual' ethos. Left alone most of us are a mixture of liberal and conservative ideas, often depending upon our personal experiences. One problem is that as a society we are continuously bombarded with images that should be exceptional rather than ordinary. Secular society, for no other reason than control through power, has effectively taken God out of our collective lives, denuding us of the ordinary discipline of respect - for ourselves and others. True happiness is not generated through excitement, but through Love and to love we must engage with others. We know when we arrive at a healthy place, for it is accompanied by Peace - the first gift of the Holy Spirit.
Your ideas are on point, as usual. I’m not familiar with Lauren Southern but your comments can reach beyond one person’s biography. Thank you for your thought and promoting ours.