I typically avoid Twitter skirmishes, but James Lindsay’s diatribes against key dissident thinkers such as Paul Gottfried and Hans-Hermann Hoppe warrant scrutiny. As someone who knows Paul Gottfried personally, I can confidently clarify a few points. Yes, he was under the tutelage of Herbert Marcuse, but the Old Right has a greater influence on him than Marcuse. Paul is fond of people like M.E. Bradford, Wilmore Kendall, and Southern conservatives. Secondly, he is not preoccupied with white identity politics and IQ gaps. I have personal correspondence from him that demonstrates that he has no animus for minority groups. As for Hoppe, his intellectual lineage is rooted in the work of Murray Rothbard, and his thinking on monarchy was probably influenced by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, considered by many to be the smartest man on the right. Hoppe also revived the writings of Karl Ludwig von Haller.

These details, however, seem to escape Lindsay, whose critiques of the dissident right reveal a shallow understanding of its thinkers. Mundane thinkers like Lindsay have nothing to offer other than banal critiques of their opponents, so if wokism is receding he has to find another target to remain relevant. Lindsay is a grifter who became famous for trumpeting DEI as a vehicle of anti-white discrimination. So, one would think that he would be elated that the DEI edifice is crumbling. However, as a grifter without valuable ideas, he has chosen to make the dissident right his new object of derision without taking the time to study the beliefs of people like Hoppe and Gottfried.

Despite working overtime to marginalize people like Pat Buchanan, Lew Rockwell, Murray Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and Paul Gottfried, mainstream conservatives have failed to prevent their ideas from shaping politics. James Lindsay and the other court jesters are upset that they are unable to control the debate, that’s why they coin derisive terms to silence opponents into obscurity. Thankfully, however, instead of bolstering the influence of Lindsay and his minions, it is only fueling well-deserved contempt for “Conservative, Inc.” Lindsay is doing excellent advertising for dissident scholars, so eventually people will realize that they are right, and Lindsay is simply a gatekeeper with nothing to contribute other than cheap insults.