The Fracturing of the Right: Ye, Trump, and DeSantis
What are the recent controversies and divisions on the Right a sign of?
The Republican failure to take U.S. Senate control in the midterm elections has sparked debate between the MAGA die-hards, who back Trump in his presidential re-election bid, and the “sensible centrists” who have flocked to Ron DeSantis because of his electability and the political wins he has gotten as Florida governor.
Ye (formerly Kanye West) entering the mix by announcing his “YE24” campaign stirred the pot. It’s signaled a growing movement on the Right that opposes conceding ground and views denial of the Jews holding significant institutional power as a sign of weakness. Yet even with this rhetoric and his partnering with figures like Milo Yiannopoulos and Nick Fuentes, Ye’s team has managed to hurt Trump’s bid more than anything: Trump dining with Nick Fuentes has become the topic of the news cycle. Despite Ye saying Trump didn’t know who Fuentes was on Timcast IRL, Trump’s refusal to denounce him has ensured that Con Inc. figures such as Ben Shapiro will continue to admonish him.
And while Ye storming out of Tim Pool’s show turned a large audience—one that viewed the press as being unfair toward him and was willing to give him a chance—against him, it seems that this was insignificant compared to the level of attention garnered by leaving around 20 minutes into the show. Milo has also made it clear that he wants revenge against Trump, and he’s already succeeding on that front.
The Right’s Political Prospects
Even if this is a determining factor in how the GOP presidential primary unfolds, so what? Trump has continued to shill for the Establishment. He’s revoked his endorsement for Mitch McConnell yet endorsed Rick Scott for Senate Majority Leader. As if there’s much of a difference—it would be a fiction of the mind to claim that this changes anything. Scott is no better, having passed gun restrictions as Florida governor such as the Red Flag law and an increase in the legal purchasing age for firearms.
And DeSantis, while the more electable candidate, likely won’t produce great results either based on his foreign policy stances. In that regard, he has already displayed hawkishness toward Cuba and proven that he’d continue the U.S. government’s indisputable loyalty to the State of Israel. Ultimately, the realistic outcome is that he’ll be questioned on his foreign policy views but won’t receive much pushback on them from conservatives. It’s not as if the current order will magically be contested by the masses without a challenge to the federal system itself.
The Power of the Narrative
What’s significant about Ye’s endeavors, though, is that he’s contributing to political discourse heading toward the ground of the Right. The Right is no longer as absorbed in the hardcore perspectives of the Left—the dynamic is inverting.
As Michael Malice has previously put it:
With the increase in political division amid this power struggle also comes a greater likelihood of national divorce. Again, the federal system remaining intact upholds the status quo, so the aspects of the ongoing madness that undermine it inspire hope.