In Defense of Memes: A Response to Alex Kaschuta

Trump and the online right needn't be perfect to succeed

Has the vibe shifted against the right? According to writer and podcaster Alex Kaschuta, the answer is yes. “The vibe is shifting yet again,” she recently posted on Twitter. “The cumulative IQ of the right is looking worse than the market.”

Alex is one of a handful of former Trump supporters who, in light of the tariff debacle, have publicly renounced not only MAGA but also the online right. She outlined her new position in a recent Substack post. Although some of Alex’s critiques are valid, her analysis is too colored by personal grievances to fully serve as the type of constructive criticism the right needs.

In the post, titled “The vibes-BASED international order,” Alex argues that the online right, while creative and powerful, is ultimately plagued by dysfunction. This dysfunction, in her view, can be seen in the perceived errors of the Trump administration. “I don’t disavow my guests,” she writes, “but this doesn’t change the fact that the overarching machine of the online right, much like the Tumblr left that preceded it, ultimately doesn’t serve these interests effectively.”

The problem, Alex argues, is structural. The online right selects for “memeable anecdotes” and in the process transforms people into “walking, talking bundles of thought-terminating clichés.” She believes that “the end of the road is either a relentless focus on classics like ‘the Jews’ or ‘women,’ or something more amorphous like the eldritch specter of entropy represented by the Left consuming everything in its path.”

Putting aside the fact that “the Left” qualifies as a perfectly good term for what we’re up against as far as I’m concerned, she’s right to a certain extent. Some people get into the online right and wind up more confused than they were in the first place. But not everyone follows that path. On Twitter, you choose your own adventure. While we can (as I have) criticize the grifters who promote online idiocy, if you discover Twitter and decide to be the guy who attacks people for discussing topics other than “the Jews” and gets his information from low-resolution 4chan memes, that’s on you. I don’t think the cliché bundles Alex mentions were destined for intellectual greatness before discovering this space. And the online right is an incredibly wide terrain – the factions that promote stupid, reductive explanations for complex phenomena are by no means the only ones.

Alex complains about the incentives that shape online communication. “The only direction a meme can take is further,” she writes. “To de-escalate is to cuck.” In other words, as a right-wing influencer, your audience wants you to push the envelope and ramp up the edginess, regardless of whether doing so is truthful or strategically sound. “My own audience grew progressively more hungry for its weekly dose of edginess,” writes Alex about this dynamic.

As someone who’s been in the “professional influencer” position for years, I can relate. Audience capture is real. And the reality is that the people with the biggest audiences almost always traffic in edginess and controversy. The average person tuning into dissident right stuff primarily wants transgressive entertainment. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with that. But for those of us who aren’t willing to cater to idiots, the constant pressure to say false or strategically unsound things – to peddle delusions and pipedreams – can be irritating. I’ve lost a few previously generous supporters because I refused to Candace-ify my commentary. If people want to hear about how Stalin was Jewish or whatever, they can go elsewhere for that. I value my dignity too much to stoop to that level.

Had Alex left it at that – a critique of the idiocy found on the online right, the threat of audience capture, the entertainment factor, etc. – I would have found this a thoughtful article, even if she paints with too broad a brush at times. But once she begins critiquing Trump, the article takes a turn for the worse.

According to Alex, the Trump administration’s failures are the result of government-by-meme. She names several policies and traces their origin to internet memes. In other words, it isn’t just that the Trump administration has made some mistakes. I would agree with that in a few cases. Instead, she weaves the following narrative: Because the Trump administration is downstream from online right meme culture, it can only fail. That I cannot agree with.

Tariffs are first up on the chopping block:

The Liberation Day Tariffs are one of the first online-right meme policies. They are a perfect storm of congruence between the ascendant memes of “multipolarity,” “America First,” and “reviving manufacturing will bring back the 1950s social order,” and Trump’s hardened mind palace where he has been obsessed with both the trade deficit with China and the idea of tariffs as revenue since the 1980s. The policy, from its framing of tariffs as a tribute paid to the US by lowly but extractive lesser nations, to the way they were napkin-calculated based on bilateral trade deficit numbers, to the implication that this is the one way to reshore manufacturing, is the effect of memes coming home to roost. The schizophrenic implementation of the policy is the result of the rough landing of pure vibes in the real economy. The endless 4D chess justifications for every twist and turn are nothing new; they are the trade of the online right influencer, sharpened on the daily grind of fitting memes and meanings onto the events of the day, “just asking questions” and applying edifying lenses like “you don’t hate journalists enough” or “don’t make me tap the sign” (*the elites are pedophiles).”

Just so we’re clear, I agree that Liberation Day was a misstep – easily Trump’s biggest so far. While I would have supported a more targeted approach – on specific industries, from specific countries, etc. – the reciprocal tariffs were poorly conceived and poorly implemented. Fortunately, Trump has walked them back a bit, which isn’t 5D chess, but more a sign of his willingness to adjust course when things aren’t working.

But the extent to which blame for Liberation Day can be laid at the feet of the online right is debatable. Tariffs have always been part of the MAGA agenda, but they weren’t a focal point during the 2024 election. The dissident right is more concerned with issues like race and immigration, and normie MAGA tends to focus on more mundane stuff than trade policy. If Liberation Day was downstream from anything, it’s Trump and his advisors, not online right meme culture.

But there is room for criticism when it comes to the response some on the right had to Trump’s reciprocal tariffs. Those of us who – me, Scott Greer, the American Sun, BAP, and so on – who pushed back against the policy, however delicately, received angry replies. “How dare you imply that Trump is making a mistake!” This attitude doesn’t help. Nor did the normie MAGA influencers who mindlessly defended Liberation Day. The most egregious offender was Benny Johnson, who posted on Twitter, “Losing money means nothing. Digital ones and zeroes. In the end, you won't miss any of it.” Masterful messaging.

Alex also describes DOGE as a “meme policy.” To be fair, Elon’s project has been a mixed bag. It’s clear now that DOGE will not reach the $2 trillion in cuts he initially sought. It has only managed to trim $160 billion, a figure some dispute. But DOGE did manage to gut USAID, which counts for something. A full analysis of DOGE is beyond the scope of this article, but characterizing it as a complete failure isn’t quite right. And attributing its perceived failure to its “meme” nature is questionable.

When it comes to deportations, Alex is unfortunately guilty of offering the same bad-faith analysis as Trump’s other critics on the right:

The deportations, as performed by this administration—whatever you think of the merits of mass deporting illegal aliens—are another meme policy. Numbers for FY 2025 are running about 5,200 removals (approximately 4%) behind the pace set in FY 2024 under Biden. Ghiblified illustrations of crying fentanyl dealers posted by the White House may amuse the meme lords, but they don’t do much to increase effectiveness on one of the most electorally salient issues.

Anyone familiar with immigration policy will immediately spot the error here. The Biden administration counted people turned away at the border (returns) as deportations. So amid a historic border crisis, sure, Biden “deported” some illegals. Never mind that interior deportations declined dramatically on his watch. Within a month of entering office, however, Trump virtually ended the border crisis. According to CBP data, apprehensions along the southern border dropped below 7,200 in March, a 95 percent decline from March 2024. This is a remarkable accomplishment, even if much work remains to be done on the immigration front.

As for Trump’s deportations, I, too, would like them to be higher. But so would he! In February, Trump removed his acting ICE director, Caleb Vitello, over frustrations with low deportation numbers. He revoked the legal status of many hundreds of thousands of migrants who entered during the Biden years. He enlisted the IRS to assist with deportations. The Laken Riley Act was the first bill he signed after his inauguration. He invoked the Alien Enemies Act. The list goes on. If you think Trump isn’t serious about deportations, you aren’t paying attention.

Mass deportations cannot happen overnight. Immense obstacles must first be overcome. Funding is a big one, as Homan has made clear. Fortunately, ICE’s budget is set to double or triple soon. Legal challenges are another obstacle, but so far, Trump has held the line against these judicial assaults on his agenda. Whether or not he will ultimately triumph over the courts remains to be seen. But one cannot accuse him of inaction, which is essentially what those who point to the deportation numbers are doing.

Alex curiously omits this context from her analysis of Trump’s immigration policies. Instead, she lazily offers a single paragraph, hoping it proves sufficient to illustrate Trump’s unseriousness and to convince you that Trump isn’t doing enough. But if this illustrates anyone’s unseriousness, it isn’t Trump’s.

Immigration isn’t the area in which Alex fails to credit Trump’s achievements. For a podcaster who made a name for herself opposing wokeness, she neglects to mention the excellent progress Trump has made on this issue. So far, he has signed executive orders targeting DEI, affirmative action, and, most recently, disparate impact. These are powerful blows to wokeness, which, as I am sure Alex knows, is in large part downstream of civil rights law.

Amusingly, these, too, are meme policies, downstream from the same online right meme machine she wrote her article to denounce. This is the real weak point of her argument. If both the good and the bad decisions made by an administration are the result of memes, then that weakens the “meme policies are bad” argument. That argument is further weakened if the good policies outnumber the bad ones. And the fact that Alex solely focuses on the bad policies indicates she isn’t interested in accurately portraying what’s happening.

Again, there is still much to be done. But we’re only a few months into Trump’s second term! Things aren’t perfect – no administration is – but in many ways, this one has surpassed expectations. God willing, it will continue to do so.

Alex’s cherry-picking might suggest that something else is going on. According to an NYT summary of a recent podcast appearance of hers – it seems her recent tack has garnered mainstream attention – Alex admitted that her disillusionment preceded the tariff debacle:

Well before the tariffs, Kaschuta, who trained as an economist, was moving away from the movement that once thrilled her. She recently appeared on the podcast of another dissident from the dissident right, the onetime conservative influencer Pedro Gonzalez, where they discussed their mutual disillusionment.

The mother of young children, Kaschuta described internalizing tradwife ideas about women’s primacy in the home. When she tried to take on all the domestic labor in her own family, it nearly broke her. She started to realize that while the new right’s racism and misogyny were often delivered with an ironic smirk, it was no joke. As a woman, she said, “you’d have to lean back and just accept that people will belittle you.

There you have it. Alex “nearly broke” after doing too many chores and facing misogyny online. That came first, and the policy disagreements came later. Now, I’m not interested in opining on her personal life. She has been nothing but kind to me, and I wish her the best. I’m only referencing these personal factors (which she provided to the world) to point out that they are the origin of her political grievances.

Having spent nearly a decade in the scene, I’ve witnessed many people change their political views for (often petty) personal reasons. They then play this pitiful game where they pretend as if their newfound beliefs are sincere and not the product of bitterness. Alex, to her credit, has confessed that personal factors preceded her dissatisfaction with the Trump administration. But those personal factors clearly continue to color her political analysis, which calls into question whether the latter is anything but a rationalization for the former.

Such is the great irony of Alex’s polemic: Her resentful attempt to reduce the right to vibes and feelings is ultimately the product of vibes and feelings. I could say something misogynistic here, but I’ll be nice.

What I found most objectionable about her piece, however, is the feeling I got while reading it that she actually wants Trump and the online right to fail. People in the dissident right who make a point about breaking from Trump often adopt this position. They get tired of Trump, they feel hurt and left out, so they wind up wanting the whole thing to come crashing down, the country be damned, just so they can induldge in schadenfreude and say they told you so. This is a deeply nihilistic position. I don’t know if that’s where Alex is at now, but I shouldn’t have to explain why it’s a road to hell.

At the end of the day, Alex isn’t American. So while I’m thankful for her past advocacy, I, unlike her, cannot log off and find myself the citizen of an entirely different country. American politics isn’t just something I, or likely most of you reading this, can simply tune out. We need Trump to succeed. As such, we must ensure that the administration gets good faith feedback on its policies. We shouldn’t be mindless cheerleaders. But condemning Trump and the online right – without which no one would be talking about the existential issues of our time – over a few policy flops and some unfortunate online dynamics is clearly taking things too far in the other direction.

Trump, flaws and all, is our champion. Had he not come down the escalator in 2015, none of this would be happening. For those who have succumbed to bitterness, perhaps that would be preferable. But on the timeline where Trump never enters the arena, America continues to die a slow, quiet death without putting up a fight.

Time will tell whether or not Trump and his movement will succeed. But, fortunately for us, neither need to be perfect for us to cross the finish line. Don’t lose sight of that.