I think most liberals are probably familiar with what has become known as Wilhoit’s Law – that the true goals of the right are inequality, injustice, repression and control. This is how composer Frank Wilhoit put it in 2018:
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect,” Wilhoit wrote. “There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.”
I think liberals are probably less familiar with another part of Wilhoit’s “law” – that these goals are so indefensible in a country founded on liberty and equality that it is necessary for conservatives to cover them up with lies.
“As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly,” Frank Wilhoit wrote, “it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny.”
On the right, US citizenship has always been a matter of race and white power. The overarching objective of conservatism since the founding has been maintenance of a social order in which rich white men are on top. But that can’t be plainly said in the land of freedom and opportunity, where everyone has an equal shot at success if they work hard and play by the rules.
So the right lies. The Republicans say “illegal immigration” is a matter of law enforcement. They say “border integrity” is a matter of national security. They say liberal immigration policies that fall short of enforcing the law and securing the border debase what it means to be a law-abiding US citizen.
They make endless appeals to higher principles in order to cover up for the fact that their true goal is the abomination of those same principles.
But as the right expands its power, it sometimes requires new and better rationalizations. It occasionally finds it necessary to slough off the old lies.
Since the 1990s, for instance, nothing has been more “sacred” than the Second Amendment. We were told the freedom to bear arms “shall not be infringed.” On the strength of this apparent conviction, little if anything has been done to address the spread of shooting massacres over the last decade.
Yet when the Trump regime needed an explanation for why Border Patrol officers were forced on January 24 to kill Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis, the sacredness of the Second Amendment was easily forgotten. “You can't have guns,” the president said in the aftermath. “You can't walk in with guns. You just can't. You can't walk in with guns. You can't do that.”
Alex Pretti was legally permitted to conceal carry. (He did not brandish his weapon. CBP disarmed him before he was shot.) That, however, wasn’t enough. “You bring a gun into the District, you mark my words, you're going to jail,” said US attorney for DC, Jeanine Pirro. “I don't care if you have a license in another district and I don't care if you're a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else. You bring a gun into this District, count on going to jail.”
The right refused to act on a decades’ worth of shooting massacres because it was in the right’s interest to allow terror to spread across the land. That could never be plainly said, of course, so it covered up that objective with the Second Amendment. Once gun rights were no longer useful – terror is the intention of a paramilitary going door-to-door searching for “illegals” almost exclusively in states run by Democrats – they could be easily discarded.
There is, however, risk in throwing away the old lies. The Republican Party is the white man’s party but its viability in a multiracial democracy like ours depends on most white people not really understanding the truth. The party’s future depends on most white people continuing to believe lies about, say, immigration being about the security and integrity of US citizenship.
If a majority of white people come to believe that what the Republicans really mean by citizenship is whiteness, not legal status, the GOP could risk losing parts of its coalition in ways it can’t afford. I think the risk is especially acute if white people understand that patriotism itself is racialized – that white people who defend the American Dream are seen as traitors to their race.
I don’t want to overstate this risk. Whiteness is resilient. Even if most white people unite to punish Trump in some way, I wouldn’t expect such unity to last. Yet the more the right uses its power to achieve its goals, the more it throws away the lies that it told to gain that power. And the longer that pattern holds true, the more chances there are for the truth to be revealed.
Consider the above clip by white supremacist Nick Fuentes. He says Renee Good and Alex Pretti were “race traitors,” who were "not acting like citizens.”
Are people waking up to Wilhoit’s Law?
Alan Elrod thinks so. He’s the president and CEO of the Pulaski Institution, a think tank in Arkansas. In his latest for Liberal Currents, he looked at Fuentes’ statements, as well as those by other far-right commentators, to explain that whiteness isn’t the protection that many white Americans believe it is.
In a follow up interview with me, he explained further.
“Enemies can be excluded and treated however the state deems fit,” he told me. “This was at the heart of Nazi juridico-political theory, and I think we are seeing it play out today. I think that the murders of two white, middle class people in a Midwestern city is absolutely driving that message home.”
Here’s the rest of our conversation.
Nick Fuentes isn't the first to link whiteness with citizenship, but he might be the most honest about it. Others, like Matt Walsh and Megyn Kelly and Glenn Beck are much better at lying about their intentions. Thoughts?
I think they're more invested in layering their prejudices beneath what they see as more socially appealing calls for law and order, child safety and cultural concerns. But these are pretty recognizable tropes in racist politicking. I'd also say that Kelly and Walsh in particular are becoming less inclined to hide their bigotry. Walsh repeatedly talks about "Third World" people with total contempt on his show. Kelly has praised Fuentes. The big difference, I think, is that they still want to be seen as important, popular media figures. There's the occasional coyness you don't get with Fuentes.
When I saw Fuentes' reaction to Good's and Pretti's murders, I thought of Wilhoit's Law: inequality and injustice are the point of conservatism. That's indefensible in a country founded on freedom and equality. So conservative must lie. Are Good's and Pretti's murders opening people's eyes?
I think so. Wilhoit's Law, which I believe is derived from a blog comment by Ohioan Frank Wilhoit, is essentially a pithy distillation of Carl Schmitt's friend/enemy distinction. In this sense, the state is not obligated to extend protections or presumptions of innocence to all people, only those it considers friendly. Enemies can be excluded and treated however the state deems fit. This was at the heart of Nazi juridico-political theory, and I think we are seeing it play out today. I think that the murders of two white, middle class people in a Midwestern city is absolutely driving that message home.
It seems to me that people like Rand Paul understand the stakes much better than Trump and his gang -- that the long-term viability of a white man's party depends on most white people not really knowing that it's a white man's party. Suddenly Paul is saying the DHS can't be trusted to investigate Pretti's murder. Perhaps there's even potential for getting rid of Trump. Thoughts?
I think Paul is an outlier. He certainly appears to be genuinely committed to some of his non-interventionist and civil libertarian beliefs. But I don't think there's appetite among Republicans for getting rid of Trump. This is both because I think many Republicans are on board with him and because the remainder are too cowed by the political realities of party politics. The fact that even people like Thom Tillis, who is retiring, and Susan Collins, whose state of Maine is also being targeted by ICE at the moment, won't take any serious steps toward checking Trump is evidence of this.
I can't remember another time when rightwingers subjected white people -- or "race traitors" -- to the same kind of denigration that we saw given to Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, George Floyd and dozens of other victims of state violence. Good and Pretti are getting "no angels" treatment, with the help of the press corps. I'm told "the normies" are waking up. True?
I think a lot of people who don't pay close attention to politics are repulsed by stuff like this. My friend Nicholas Grossman wrote a great piece at Liberal Currents about how the Pretti discourse is breaking through in traditionally apolitical parts of the internet. But I also think Americans have short memories, and our politics remains discouragingly thermostatic. I thought January 6 would have woken up the normies. It did for a minute, I think. But then we re-elected Trump.
Trump has done more to discredit gun rights than any president in my lifetime. He's so focused on smearing Pretti that he suggested he deserved death for carrying a gun. These lies -- in this case the inviolability of the Second Amendment -- are very important to keeping what I call respectable white people in the Republican camp. What do you make of it?
I think the hypocrisy here is pretty important. I'm from Arkansas. I grew up around gun owners, and I know plenty of gun owners today. No one with any appreciation or respect for guns and gun ownership can look at what happened in the Pretti murder and see anything other than the gross violation of someone's Second Amendment rights by impulsively violent and thuggish goons.
However, I think that the hypocrisy that's been revealed on this issue by Republican elected officials and policy groups is just one more snowflake in the blizzard. Under MAGA, this is just another application of the friend/enemy distinction. Everything is.