Escaping the Slop Right Matrix

The Matrix (1999), which spawned the red-pill and blue-pill meme, presented a clear dichotomy between being literally trapped in a vat and presented with a fake reality and breaking free of that vat and “seeing things as they really are”, outside the Matrix, in the actual flesh-and-blood world. That phrase “seeing things as they really are” is reminiscent of Louis Althusser’s “A Letter on Art in Reply to André Daspre” (1966), in which he claims that true art gets us to see, in a sense, beyond our own ideological goldfish bowl. However, as I’ve discussed before, Althusser did not see the possibility of truly breaking free from The Matrix, but rather, at best, simply replacing one goldfish bowl with another. For him, this meant replacing the Western capitalist goldfish bowl with a communist one. Here, while there is an actual “outside The Matrix”, it is beyond our human capability to see, somewhat like Plato’s Cave. This slight metaphysical element to Althusser’s thinking has drawn criticism from some orthodox Marxists such as Paul Cockshott (who replied to me on this matter here), but nonetheless it still strikes me as describing what happens.

Many rightists understand this; for example, with religion: in the absence of an overriding faith something, anything, will fill the void because humans seem to have a religion-shaped hole as a built-in feature of their operating software. This is explored in Darwin’s Cathedral (2002) by David Sloan Wilson. As you’ve probably already guessed from my title: I believe something like this has happened to people who thought they had become “red-pilled” and stepped out of The Matrix a few years ago. All that has really happened is that they’ve left the old neo-liberal goldfish bowl and plonked themselves in a new one that can be broadly called “Slop Right”, a strange make-believe world in which tweets substitute for politics, and performative outrage and cruelty for clicks substitutes for any sort of real-world result. Yet – strange beings that we humans are and mysterious as the universe is – there is an esoteric truth that what first happens in the realm of the imagination starts to manifest in the real world. Thus, in current year, we find ourselves living increasingly in someone else’s deranged dream. Or, if you prefer, a new blue pill. The choice for us is only: do you acquiesce and allow your brain to be turned into a sort of cheese by taking this new blue pill, which is the easy path, or do you resist and try to hold on to any semblance of reality in the face of the raw sewage pipe of slop that represents right-wing politics today? Many are now making their choice.

The present time is a critical test for the right, one which I fear that it is sadly failing. Many like to paint the civilisational struggle with “the left” as existential, a battle of good versus evil, in which “our side” is on the angels and the enemy are “demons”. It has become common for people to talk these terms. Yet, increasingly, one gets the feeling that the energy built up on “the right” has turned nasty, ugly, and, well, increasingly demonic. Over the past decade, there was an acute sense that “we” held the moral high-ground – the enemy cheated, the enemy called us names, the enemy got us fired from jobs, the enemy tried to put Donald Trump in jail, the enemy killed Charlie Kirk – but this accumulated capital has been squandered rapidly over the past month or so. I have watched “the right” degenerate into a near-mindless and emotional cheerleading squad for, among other things, kidnapping a world leader on the thinnest of pretexts for reasons that still are not abundantly clear, the shooting of a mother of three by scarcely-trained government officials (among several such incidents involving ICE), and increasingly erratic threats from President Trump against long-standing allies, such as Canada and Denmark. This cheerleading has come served with a strange side of performative sadism that seems to come from the world of Quentin Taratino movies rather than conservative political commentary. I am not simply talking about the usual slop posters on X, but very prominent voices, such as Matt Walsh.

Trump’s recent comments that he puts his own morality above the law worried many people across the political spectrum. Liberals currently have a smug sense of “I told you so”, as the President’s actions and rhetoric do at least appear to be somewhat fascistic. Names like Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt, discussed only in theory on the intellectual right a few years back, are now brought up with increasing alarm that we might be seeing democratic norms and institutions dissolve before our eyes. My fear, however, is not this. I have no doubt the midterms will take place (it’s a liberal talking point that they won’t), and I have no doubt the Democrats will win them. My fear, rather, is that all this is going to kill the viability of rightist ideas for a generation: “We gave you the shot and you blew it by acting like excitable monkeys; furthermore, you confirmed our predictions and proved that the right is driven by nothing but unthinking hate”. What makes things worse is that, as things stand, the liberal assessment is correct.

On the global stage, there is serious concern that NATO cannot survive. Last week, on a very mainstream liberal radio station (yes, it’s LBC!), I heard a British general say that if American soldiers fire on European troops in Greenland, it would spell the end of American bases in Europe and signal the end of the postwar order. Again, this is nothing I am worried about (I prefer a sovereign Europe and an end to postmodern fictions!), but the political impact of all of this is that it is discredits the right in Europe. In fact, so unpopular are these moves by Trump, that the net effect has been to split the European right from the American right along lines that ultimately strengthen the neoliberal establishment. On this, Farage and Le Pen have had to fall in behind Starmer and Macron, and the balance of opinion from dissident voices on the right has also been to fall in behind them – an extremely rare moment of moral unity among the establishment, insurgent populist leaders and the so-called online right. The trouble is, those populists and many online right figures have spent the past decade cheerleading Trump too, so they have been made to look ridiculous. Again, I fear, once the excitement is over, all this might serve to put “the right” to bed for a decade as it will be argued – correctly perhaps – that it is unfit to govern. All this is especially the case when, time and again, as in the case of Greenland, Trump is widely seen “to TACO” and make his cheerleaders look even more pathetic and risible.

None of this has been helped by the continued spiralling downwards of “the discourse” on social media, especially Elon Musk’s X, which – sans the oversight of liberal overlords – has genuinely turned into a sewer of performatively extremist rhetoric and increasingly unpleasant hatred. In such an environment, people try to “one-up” each other in how outlandish and offensive they can be. Serious policy is replaced by this “based Olympics”. Some people, addicted to this environment, have sadly become “slop brained” and taken leave of reality. Actual politics is replaced by a fantasy world – “Nationalist Narnia” as I heard one commentator say – in which the power of tweets will, as if by magic, deport tens of millions of people. Not only are such plans completely unrealistic, but also, since this social media activity is done in lieu of any real political organising, all that is being achieved is a digital breadcrumb trail for the increasingly draconian governments of Britain and Europe to collect all the evidence they need to follow the lead of Australia and crackdown as hard as they can on dissidents. Starmer has even discussed banning X – and to be honest, I hope he does, it would be the best thing ever to happen to “the right”.