Some of the most insufferable people in the United States convened in Washington, DC, this weekend for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Tech billionaires, Christian nationalists, neo-Nazis, Zionists, and all sorts of other dorks and ghouls rubbed shoulders, relishing the fact that for this moment, people are actually lapping up their cringeworthy jokes and doomerist politics. They were joined by far-right figures from around the world, particularly Europe, where reactionary movements are also on the rise. Notably absent were the once powerful establishment conservatives like Mitch McConnell, Chris Christie, or Mitt Romey, who have been run out of CPAC as the Trumpist right advances.
The conference comes as polling indicates that just one month into Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the public is already losing faith in his handling of the economy and questioning his moves to concentrate power in the executive branch. Importantly, Elon Musk’s unelected role in the Trump administration is particularly unpopular in the recent polling.
It is no wonder, then, that Trump began his one-hour-and-13-minute speech at the conference by insisting that, no, actually, he has a historic mandate and people totally like him and like the Right. While support in the United States for right-wing populism in the absence of a revolutionary left alternative should not be underestimated, Trump’s inflation of his mandate and talk of how red the electoral map was on election night came off like a child sticking their fingers in their ears and going, “Lalala, I can’t hear you.”
The fact is that the Far Right doesn’t actually have a plan to meaningfully address the economic crises that workers are facing, so they have to rely on a mix of authoritarian maneuvers and moral panics over immigration, trans rights, and other oppressed communities to maintain a base of political support. Already their most egregious attacks on basic democratic rights and workers’ livelihoods are facing resistance in the streets. They probably know this, which is why they relished in the “safe space” that CPAC provided.
Along with insisting on a fictitious mandate, Trump’s speech was essentially a bingo card of all his typical far-right talking points. A few important moments, however, showed that even within the Right, there is not as much unity as CPAC would have us believe. For example, in his speech, Trump took time to justify both the outsized influence of Elon Musk — the richest person in the world — in his administration, as well as his self-serving appeals to the labor movement. He acknowledged that both points have received pushback, seemingly not just from what he calls “the radical Left.” No, Trump was on the defensive, even as he presented these relationships as a testament to his supposed political brilliance.
Trump was not the only speaker. Many others added to the display of nationalism and economic privilege in its most tedious form. Viral moments ranged from Elon Musk talking about how he has “become the meme” with a straight face, to Steve Bannon — and at least one other speaker — delivering Nazi solutes (or “Roman solutes,” for those following the bootlicking mainstream media). In one especially terrible moment, the far-right president of Argentina, Javier Milei, gifted Elon Musk a chainsaw, symbolizing the disastrous anti-worker austerity measures that Milei has been carrying out in Argentina and that Musk is attempting to carry out in the United States.
To be clear, the Far Right and their attacks on workers and oppressed communities should not just be written off as a mere clown show. As U.S. imperialism decays, more and more people desperate to escape the miserable conditions of the neoliberal period are turning to new ideas against the status quo. This creates a real, troubling basis for the Far Right to grow its base. But modern-day politics is not just CPAC, and all the reactionaries who smirked and joked around through this past weekend are sure to find that outside of their little conference, their vision to consolidate power will be difficult to implement.
Anecdotally, as I followed along, my Twitter feed was full of people getting tens of thousands of likes for posts saying that Musk, Bannon, and others at CPAC are losers and that they should die. To be clear, on a platform that Musk literally owns and constantly censors, multiple people got tens of thousands of positive reactions making fun of the billionaire and wishing for his death, and that hatred was extended to pretty much everyone at the conference. The Far Right are terrible dorks, and people know it and aren’t afraid to say it.
Beyond saying it, we should all channel that hatred and wipe the smirks of these people’s faces by organizing movements in the streets, using our labor power to grind their flow of profits to a halt, and put forward a socialist vision for society that can actually address the issues that Trump, Musk, and their ilk have no intention of solving. The triumph of such a society can be the political equivalent of giving these capitalists and reactionaries the big fat wedgie they deserve.
