on ending The Alt-Right Playbook

[this is going to sound kind of despondent. because, well, it is, but it's not (I don't think) going to end with "everything is hopeless, might as well give up and die." I am writing this in one go with maybe 1/3 of a sense where I'm headed, so I don't entirely know what I'm going to say, but "give up" is not what I'm aiming at. I am, however, experiencing some genuine despair and giving myself permission to feel my feelings, so that's gonna be in the mix. you do not have to listen to me right now if that's gonna be a bad time for you.] 

I want to end The Alt-Right Playbook.

eight years ago, I started the notes and research of what would become my flagship series, the thing that made me financially self-sufficient and got me known outside the world of "video game youtubers." in 2016, despite all narratives saying Trump was going to lose the election so hard the Republican Party would have to remake itself completely, he won, and I needed to know how that happened. the goal wasn't much loftier than that: I knew that all the things we had been doing to fight Trumpism and the internetification of fascism weren't working, and I didn't know what we should do if I didn't understand why we were failing. I was a youtuber, which meant I could afford to fall down a rabbit hole so long as videos came out in the process. and I wanted to share what I learned with other people asking those same questions - "how did this happen and what should we do?" - because those people probably couldn't spend months on end researching it.

it wasn't supposed to last eight years.

(typing that sentence out, I realize how much weight it is carrying as literal fact and deeply prescient metaphor. sorry, I'm not trying to be clever. I can't often turn the essayist part of my brain off.)

The Alt-Right Playbook has been "about two years from done" for at least five years. I have put "finish the main body of The Alt-Right Playbook" on my Annual Goals document every year since before the pandemic. I was in talks with a book publisher about a print edition, and we decided it would be ideal to finish the videos before printing the essays, and I thought, with a bit of a push, I could pull that off before the election.

by which I mean the 2020 election.

there are many reasons for this interminable pace: a pandemic, a spine injury, an undiagnosed neurodivergence that got out of hand, a number of major life events and crises. but the single greatest issue is this: in my heart, the series ended in 2019.

that's when I made How to Radicalize a Normie. that's when, for me, the series was over. I hadn't answered the questions I came in with, but I had answered something else: "how do people get recruited into this decentralized, web-based fascism, how do they get out, and what does this tell us about radical conservatism in the modern age?" I didn't realize that's what I had been building towards. but it fit. it felt right. it was the closest thing to "original research" I had done for the series, not just learning about a phenomenon and explaining it from my own perspective, but synthesizing a few dozen sources into a perspective I hadn't really heard anywhere else. and it was, and remains, the most successful video in the series and in my channel's history; even after YouTube's algorithm buried it with an age-restriction, it broke 3 million views.

it was also the last new idea I had for the series, and it's when I stopped researching.

but I still had this huge list of topics I was intending to get through. with twelve or so still to go, I had happened into a proper endpoint for the series. I also felt that, inasmuch as such things could be answered, I did now understand how we got here, and at least knew what directions we should look to for getting out. but I hadn't shared it all. there were hundreds of hours of work still to do before everything I had learned was in front of the audience I was making them for. and it wouldn't feel right to just bow out then: it didn't make professional sense to dip without producing all the intended work, it didn't make financial sense to conclude my breadwinner when there was more that could be made, and it didn't make artistic sense to have done so much intellectual and creative work and simply not share it with the audience.

so I kept at it, working through my list of topics but not adding to it. not doing new research beyond fleshing out subjects I'd already mapped. and I am proud of that work - I'm not here to tell you I regret it. The Cost of Doing Business is one of the best videos I've ever made, and it would have been wrong to finish off the series without it, without explicitly confronting the way racism underpins fascist movements. I was right to continue the series. I stand by that decision.

but I have to contend with the simple fact that the fuel I started the series with was long depleted. I've found alternate sources - guest artists, new animation tricks, a collaboration in the works - but none are the thing that made me start the series in the first place. for me, the rest is busywork, and the busywork has been the majority of the series' existence. an obligation.

after yesterday's election, I don't know that I can even defend it as obligation.

the re-election of Donald Trump, I feel, makes the series all but pointless to complete. I mean, there are still logistical reasons to keep making it - it is still financially successful, and I have no idea if I can survive as a video essayist without it - but how on earth do I defend making this series anymore? "how did we get here?" is not a relevant question: we know exactly how we got here, and we just watched the Dems repeat their mistakes with full knowledge of how that turned out in 2016. The Alt-Right Playbook is a series about rhetorical tactics, and we are past rhetoric now. rhetoric is over. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post - what use is a video about how conservatives manipulate the media once the conservatives have bought the media? when one billionaire white man who stands to benefit from a Trump presidency can nix a Harris endorsement and then personally pen a glowing approval for Trump after the fact? what is the point of a video showing how grifters game Twitter algorithms when a grifter bought the entire fucking platform and handed the keys to Trump for the 24 hours before the election? what is the purpose of a video about how fascists deradicalize when the problem isn't that the Right's base is growing - it's not - it's that the liberal base shrank by 14 million votes? I'm supposed to talk to you about conservative debate tactics when they can skip the debate entirely and still win?

all the euphemisms are dead. they held a Nazi rally. he stopped fantasizing about locking his opponent up and talked about having her shot. they spend $215 million on ads attacking trans people, which isn't even popular. he's openly saying he shouldn't have left when he lost the election. the Supreme Court has said he can do whatever he wants.

I'm not saying "this is it." I'm not saying "the fascist dictatorship is here." I don't know the future, he is still a deeply inept man with even fewer mental faculties than last time and for all we know he'll fail to get anything off the ground. we are just talking about me, and my nonsense little channel.

I don't know what The Alt-Right Playbook is for in this reality. I have never been so delusional as to think my series was going to change things. I, at best, felt like I could maybe contribute in some small way to movement that was happening with or without me, maybe help some people understand things better, maybe feel less alone. and I've gotten a lot of word from people who said my work helped them exit the Far Right, which was never my intention and far more than I ever hoped for. I don't consider my work meaningless, or a failure. I am very proud of what I have accomplished.

it hasn't been what I need for a long time. I no longer thing it's what the audience needs.

here's what the plan was two days ago:

- 4-to-6 more shorts, all of which are written. I was thinking of scrapping two of them to get to the ending quicker, and incorporate the removed subjects into other videos.

- a collaboration with another youtuber, the script for which is in final revisions now and I was hoping to put out in December.

- conclusion #1: How to Tell the Truth - a video about how to debunk conservative arguments in ways that don't incidentally empower conservatives. this video is already written, the longest script I've ever produced, and patrons have had access to it for a couple of years now.

- conclusion #2: Deradicalization, a Love Story - a video about how to change conservative minds, geared around the fact that debunking and persuading are two different things and we fail when we try to do both at once. this is not written, but I know the frame structure and what I need to research still. the overarching idea is that, while people are often radicalized en masse, each person's exit is unique, personal; there aren't rules so much as a bunch of things that can and have worked in the past, which you will have to tailor to the person you're trying to persuade.

- conclusion #3: something about collective organization. my biggest takeaway from my research is that merely combating misinformation and changing minds is not enough, and we lose because we think it is. we are up against systemic problems, and they need collective solutions. we are not gonna beat fascism by making better videos or having more productive arguments; we're not gonna beat them by acting alone. debunking and deradicalizing are both good things to do, and things that people have been wanting from this series (and, indeed, figuring out how to do them was one of my goals in starting it), but they aren't the answer. we need serious collective action.

I am not making any decisions right now, but it feels absolutely fucking pointless to keep on with the shorts. I also don't know what the use of the first two conclusions would be. debunking and deradicalizing seem nearly irrelevant now. I am loathe to scrap the collab because I want to work with the person in question, and it's a good script. and I would probably keep the final short - The South Bank of the Rubicon - because it ties the series up well and is some of my best writing; it is the one bit that feels potentially more relevant today than it did on Monday.

which leaves that third conclusion. that feels like the useful direction to go. I don't know what it would look like; I've had a number of ideas, but will need to reassess how relevant they are. and I also need to assess whether "hit the library" is even the right move for me, professionally and personally. a voice within me is screaming "we can't fucking do this again." I don't want to disappear into books about fascists and klansmen again. I'm not in my 30s anymore, I genuinely don't know if my blood pressure can take it. but I also can't imagine myself jumping back into that fun script about neo-noir right now, either. so I sit with it. answers aren't going to come tonight.

I don't know that anyone reading this would say what I'm about to refute, but I feel the need to refute it anyway: The Alt-Right Playbook was never going to save you. the conclusions were never going to give you the cure to fascism. I was never going to reveal the magic words that will rhetorically defeat every chud on Twitter. Aaron Sorkin does not write the future. anyone thinking it is irresponsible to even consider ending the series soon is delirious. the revolution will not be led by video essayists. I don't blame you for hoping I would find all the answers; no matter how much I insisted that's not what the series was for, some part of me hoped I would, too.

I'm going to resist the urge to apologize for something that was neither possible nor achievable. just know I'm thinking it.

I cannot tell you it will be ok, that we'll get through this, that anything will be brighter in the morning except in the literal "daylight savings just happened" sense. I can tell you that, today at least, I am here, and so are you, and that is good. maybe in a few days or weeks I'll be ready to fight, or run, or argue, study, speak, delete this post and promise to finish the series as intended, start a new series, change careers entirely, move to Ireland, storm an ICE detention center, or write my next manifesto. but tonight, I'm going to exist. and you will too, I hope. and we will be existing, quietly, at the same time, and I'll be glad of that.

thank you.

-I