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What would become known as the Alt Right began to crystalize by the mid-2010s. The Alt Right introduced a style of White Nationalism that was so radically different than what came before that it was necessary to invent some terms to differentiate the two. Pre-Alt Right White Nationalism came to be referred to as White Nationalism 1.0 (WN 1.0). This encompassed groups such as the Klan, skinheads, the militia movement, and the efforts of individuals such as George Lincoln Rockwell, David Duke, William Pierce, and Tom Metzger. WN 1.0 was centered around real-life organizing, publicity stunts, and pursuing scraps of mainstream media attention. If you were lucky, Geraldo might have you on his show and let his audience yell at you. But however well-meaning the participants, one of WN 1.0’s defining characteristics was a somewhat lowbrow and thuggish image, as well as an off-putting presentation and humorlessness.

WN 2.0 was a complete break from the past. While there was a real-life component to the Alt Right (Identity Evropa, conferences, meetups), it was primarily centered on the internet, with a focus on propaganda and intellectual discussion. Those of WN 2.0 weren’t the scowl-faced trailer-park brawlers of yore, but rather middle-class political theory nerds who could debate your college professor under the table.

One of the Alt Right’s greatest accomplishments was shattering the image of White Nationalism as being humorless. Its weaponization of meme culture was so subversively revolutionary that it made South Park, long seen as the cutting edge of Right-wing humor, look tame and unadventurous by comparison.

I would argue that since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter (now X), combined with the sociopolitical forces unleashed by the October 7 Hamas attack and the subsequent Israel-Gaza War, that the paradigm has shifted such that we are in the White Nationalism 3.0 era. It might not feel like we are in a new era. A lot of the same faces from the 2.0 era are still around. Some stars have fallen and some are bigger than ever, but most of the big names are still around somewhere. And they still use arguments and talking points that were refined in the Alt Right era. WN 2.0 will cast a long shadow.

Three things that distinguish WN 3.0 from WN 2.0

Stability: WN 2.0 was an era of great instability. When it first emerged, widespread social media censorship was not yet a thing. One of the first hotbeds of Alt Right activity was Facebook. It’s hard to believe nowadays, as Facebook is the most censorious of all social media platforms, but The Right Stuff and the Proud Boys both emerged from it.

In the mid-2010s, the major influencers within the movement were all bloggers and podcasters. In late 2017, just as censorship began heating up on Facebook and Twitter, the Internet Bloodsports craze exploded, and from 2018 until 2020, YouTube became the epicenter of the movement. Livestreamers also gradually replaced the bloggers and podcasters as the movement’s new stars. By 2020, the last of the big pro-white YouTube channels were banned. After that, there were a few months where everyone was on DLive — but then January 6 happened.

For the period between the DLive purge until Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, the dissident Right has lacked a “home base.” The various faction of the movement went in different directions. Some shitposters went to Telegram, and others went to Gab. An unlucky few even went to Poast. Some streamers managed to stay on YouTube; some went to Odysee, and some streamed from Telegram.

After years of wandering in the online desert, the dissident Right once again has a home base of operations in Twitter/X, Rumble, and Kick. Censorship on Twitter/X seems to have stabilized, or at any rate, it does not appear to be getting worse. If you have an account today, you can be fairly confident that you will still have one next week unless you do something foolish.

There’s more advantage to Elon Twitter/X than the fact that it defends free speech. It is extremely also beneficial to have all the factions of the dissident Right on one platform, as it makes it easier for content creators to grow their audience and more convenient for consumers to find new content when we have everyone in the same place. One of the things that made the 2018 Internet Bloodsports era of YouTube so glorious: for a brief moment in time, the entire movement was there. Even if you didn’t have a YouTube channel of your own, it was easy to get a guest spot on someone else’s show. There are many people in the movement today who cite that 2018 era of YouTube as the beginning of their red-pill journey.

That said, I don’t think there is much hope of “getting band back together.” There are too many people refusing to talk to some of the others for us to ever return to a 2016-style unified front. Old grievances will linger on. But I think that much of the infighting that characterized WN 2.0 was due to the specific circumstances of that era. Today, the Optics Question that plagued WN 2.0 has been solved: Bad optics is whatever will get you banned from Twitter/X.

Relationship to mainstream conservatism: There has been some debate lately as to whether or not dissident Right ideas can now be considered “mainstream.” There has certainly been a revolution on Twitter/X, where pro-white and Judeo-critical ideas have taken over the Right-wing sphere and Zionist shills are ruthlessly pogromed in the replies. Nevertheless, there is some truth to the statement that “Twitter/X is not real life.” The Twitter/X revolution is still not being felt on FOX News, nor are elected officials promoting dissident Right ideas. Twitter/X isn’t even that large of a social-media platform, comparatively speaking; there are far more people on Facebook and TikTok.

As I’ve said before, the importance of Twitter/X is not that everyone is on it, but that everyone who matters is on it. Instagram and TikTok are for good-looking people. Twitter/X is where you go to show off how clever you are. Capturing the most high-IQ and politically-charged of the major platforms will have an effect. It might take time for it to be felt in the same way it takes time for a new music genre to go from the underground clubs to the radio, or for commie ideas to go from the coffee shops to the human resources department. But regardless of whether or not dissident Right ideas could be called mainstream, I believe that there are forces in motion that the establishment Right will not be able to stop, and that what is happening on Twitter/X will slowly start to spread to other areas of the Right.

A lot of the new people who will be coming into the pro-white sphere in the coming years will not be those who are newly red-pilled, but rather those who have been secretly red-pilled for a while and who are now coming out of the red-pill closet. Anyone who works in right-of-center politics is going to encounter our ideas. Even if they don’t seek out dissident Right content, they are going to come across them in the replies and comments sections. Charlie Kirk has known every White Nationalist talking point since 2019, and probably secretly knew we were right all along, but was just waiting for it to become safe before he said anything. Candace Owens, who emerged from Gamergate, has probably known this since 2014. How many more Candace Owens and Charlie Kirks are out there, just waiting for the social costs to drop before speaking up? I would guess many.

As the social costs of being pro-white and Judeo-critical fall, we will see more and more of these “secretly red-pilled” types coming out of the woodwork. The downside of it is that it is a sign of poor character if someone will only say the right thing when it is safe to do so. The upside is that someone who has been secretly red-pilled for years before coming out will have had more time to study and think over the ideas before espousing them. Such a person will be better at arguing for them than if he had come out earlier and will able to retain more connections.

There will be those who will hear these ideas for the first time and red-pilling, and there are already those such as Stew Peters and Alex Jones who are cynically rebranding as anti-Zionist just because it’s trendy. Whether dissident Right ideas are “mainstream” now, they are in the process of being mainstreamed in a way that I believe is all but a fait accompli.

This new situation necessitates the legacy dissident Right radically rethinking our purpose or else face obsolescence. The driving mission of the Alt Right was to take White Nationalist ideas and push them into the mainstream. Now they are in the mainstream. So what now? Throughout the WN 2.0 era, are common refrain was that “we have a monopoly on the truth.” Now we don’t anymore. People can listen to Candace Owens or Charlie Kirk and hear the truth now. They’ll say a lot of nonsense as well, but you will hear a lot of truth from them. How do we respond now that we have lost our monopoly on the truth?

Now is the time when it is important for the dissident Right to raise its game. We have to be smarter, cooler, sexier, wittier, and more interesting than the people outside our circles who are promoting the same ideas — many of whom, such as Charlie Kirk, will have establishment backing. Just being “edgier” is no longer enough.

We are in a new political paradigm and ecosystem and must adapt to it. Perhaps the dissident Right should be rethinking who we are trying to appeal to. Perhaps we should shift from trying to “red-pill the normies” to influencing the influencers. Let Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens red-pill the normies while we influence Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk. Perhaps OG dissident Rightists should shed the punk-rock outsider image of old, and embrace more of an elder stateman type of role.

The last few months have been exciting, with a new “You’ll never believe who just named the Jew!” every other day. In a way, we are winning — but at the same time, there is a danger that our ideas have been co-opted.