CONSERVATIVES ARE AWOL FROM ANDREW BREITBART’S #WAR. HERE’S HOW TO WIN : BY BENJAMIN WEINGARTEN
Back in 2009, as a conservative student, and thus a walking trigger warning in a pre-trigger warning era at Columbia University, I heard that Andrew Breitbart was coming to New York to speak about his mission to “diversify Hollywood.”
With glee, I signed up for a ticket and listened to Andrew speak, frenetic as ever, about the importance of culture and how all of us starry-eyed students should come to Hollywood and train to become movie moguls.
His ultimate vision was for the next generation of young conservatives to eschew politics — which he viewed as largely a lost cause consisting of people only focused on the next election — and instead build a sustainable conservative base by infiltrating Hollywood agencies and studios, and building our own.
The goal was to get conservatives into positions of power in the culture, who could produce compelling content with an alternative narrative, and thus challenge progressivism’s chokehold on society.
For as Andrew rightly advocated, “Politics is downstream from culture.” He saw that it was in popular culture where the field was cleared for elections to be won, and a country to be fundamentally transformed. He knew that the Left’s dominance in the space, and the conservatives’ lack of resistance, let alone interest in it, meant we would always be fighting uphill battles while losing the war.
Andrew evidently felt that his highest and best use was to go about delegitimizing and destroying the Left’s sacred cows in culture by exposing their rank hypocrisy and corruption. But he knew that when the Left’s cultural house of cards came tumbling down, there needed to be a credible alternative.
Andrew’s efforts ultimately motivated myself — and I am sure many others — to join the ideological fray in media. But his vision has never really been animated.
Conservatives have continued to build an impressive echo chamber — an echo chamber that is well-meaning and to which I am proud to contribute [note that I disagree with some of the author’s opinions in the linked article]. If for no other reason than as a means of mass group therapy in a world that we see as completely upside down, our conservative bubble provides great value to millions of our fellow Americans.
There are stories that need exposing due to the mainstream media’s sins of omission and commission, and now there are outlets that can do the essential work of bringing truth to light.
There is commentary that deserves a hearing in the public square.
How can we compete in the long-term war of ideas that ultimately determines whether the American Idea resurges or perishes?
We also need the intellectual engines in our think-tanks and publishing houses to propagate superior ideas and research that underpin and give credence to our movement.
But as politics is downstream from culture, our movement has failed to look upstream — we are stuck at news and information.
While the Left builds these very same institutions, and has its own echo chamber, it also continues to dominate in academia and popular culture — meaning that the Left has a disproportionate influence on what we learn and what entertains us.
How can we compete in the long-term war of ideas that ultimately determines whether the American Idea resurges or perishes? After all, it seems that from kindergarten through graduate school and Disney through documentaries our movement is MIA.
And why is it that the great like-minded entrepreneurs and investors who seek to see conservatism succeed in this country continue to invest hundreds of millions of dollars each election cycle on politicians for whom they receive so little a return on investment?
As I noted in a recent piece about the seemingly paradoxical wealthy leftist donors contributing to causes that undermine the very system under which they have flourished, donors contribute for many reasons. And of course, wealthy conservatives should do everything they can to elect fellow conservatives.
But what have they gotten for their money?
The Leviathan state continues to grow. Republicans continue to waffle and concede. The culture continues to grow more and more progressive.
When the Left sought to take over this country, winning elections while important was secondary to controlling the American Mind. Its intelligentsia knew that its messages had to be embedded in education and entertainment because putting Leftist red meat on full display on Day One was ineffective.
The politics would have to follow the culture.
Ironically, we should be looking to the Left if we want to develop a strategy to make things right.
Why have we conservatives, which have a lot more going for us than the fringe radical Leftists at the start of the 20th century, not more thoroughly examined how it is the Left succeeded, and sought to replicate their model or create a better one more suited to our skills and ambitions?
Is there not an appetite on the part of wealthy conservatives to finance movie studios, tv networks, podcasts, YouTube channels, documentaries, educational materials and the like that entertain and inform while inculcating the virtue upon which a free society relies?
Would such donors not prefer to diversify their investments into something that might actually change the long-term trajectory of the country for their children and children’s children rather than solely focusing on the next election of one moderate versus another moderate?
Do we lack the talent on our side to create compelling content such that it is not immediately dismissed as right-wing propaganda?
These are questions that our movement, its “thought leaders,” and funders ought to be grappling with.
What we are doing, as Steve Deace has been examining in great detail, is apparently not working.
Ironically, we should be looking to the Left if we want to develop a strategy to make things right.
– See more at: https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/08/conservatives-are-awol-from-andrew-breitbarts-war#sthash.kX0skyjI.DDXDm77D.dpuf
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