Is Conservatism a Lifestyle Brand Now?

Featured

Oct 30

The mainstream right is Very Online, and conservatives have reason to be wary.

For some time now, the American left has captured imaginations through quippy social media memes, clickbait headlines, and salacious soundbites. Meanwhile, those of us on the right pride ourselves on being on the side of truth, and truth cannot be compressed and packaged into pixels.

But emerging and rapidly growing conservative media outlets—often representing a newer, more attractive, and more popular conservatism—are playing well with digital media. Conservatism, it seems, is starting to develop a “brand” much like the mainstream left has already done. The obvious one, of course, is the recognizable MAGA imagery and apparel— and the political fervor that accompanies it. But the right’s “brand” is ever taking new shapes and forms, and new conservative media outlets are emerging, each with their own unique and distinctive energy.

An example is the conventionally attractive women in the “MAHA (Make America Hot Again)” camp, exemplified by the online magazine Conservateur, which has been called, pejoratively, “Vogue for MAGA Women.” Then there is the softer aesthetic of the popular Evie Magazine, a publication that shares content ranging from sex tips for married women to makeup routines to commentary on social issues. With both of these brands and the numerous others that are cropping up in remote corners of the internet, the aesthetic is distinctive: cozy Americana apparel, “normie” levels of physical attractiveness, “old money” vibes, and accompanying taglines that are highly patriotic, largely evangelical Christian, and otherwise conservative-coded.

This aesthetic is undeniably attractive, particularly to the young. Evie Magazine, for instance, boasts 230,000 Instagram followers and has clearly managed to achieve mainstream appeal. It makes sense that matching the mainstream left’s brand-aware, aesthetic, and social-media-friendly content might be attractive to many on the right, particularly the young; ours is an age of the Very Online. Social media doesn’t lend itself to long-form discourse, and most people aren’t interested in it anyway. Perhaps it also feels good for social conservatives, after being embattled by the left for so long in every sector of society, to feel mainstream and to claim hegemony over American imaginations. Maybe it feels good to have a paradigmatic right-wing way to present ourselves to the world. And if it’s conventionally attractive, all the better.

None of these things are inherently bad. It makes sense that after being media punching bags for so long average middle class American conservatives would be excited to see many of their political and social views trotted out by people who look approachable, attractive even, and who are managing to garner massive online audiences. And when, for years now, many social conservatives have declined sharing their political or religious opinions for fear of abandonment or public excoriation, being able to compactly and cleanly share a worldview that others will “like,” retweet, and otherwise rally around might feel comforting.

It would seem cruel to deny people this simple pleasure, but perhaps leaning hard into brand-awareness is too hard a swing toward the mainstream for conservatives. Packaging ideology for mass consumption cheapens it. And when we create paradigmatic images of a particular ideology, we risk flattening the individuals who hold those views. By succumbing to brand culture, conservative influencers are creating an archetype for who conservatives should be, how they should look, and what they should think. It’s reductive at best, and at worst, can degrade into tribalism. We saw notes of this in the MAGA fervor that has swept the nation for the last year: it might feel euphoric to cheer with others at a political rally, but what is behind that shared enthusiasm? On the left, brand-conscious tribalism was behind so much of the polarization that tore relationships apart during the COVID years. Friendships hinged on whether someone posted a black square on social media. Are conservatives veering dangerously close to a similarly reductive tribalism? It remains to be seen, but the question is worth asking.

Conservatives have traditionally championed and valued a commitment to the local: local institutions, the family being the foundational one, have been paramount in preserving conservative values. Institutions have been a mainstay, a mooring, in an increasingly fractured digital age. As the institutions that used to bind us to one another and provide an authentic sense of identity through connection and relationship decline and degrade, many conservatives seem to be grasping for an alternative. Brand culture becomes an attempt to concretize what now feels simply like ideological abstraction. The Very Online generation, devoid of the rich communities that should sustain them, try to create an ersatz community through pixels.

It is a bad alternative. Online influencers can’t—won’t—show us how to live well. While our vision of the good life was once shaped by our extended families, neighbors, and community leaders, it’s now shaped instead by social media personalities with whom our relationships are parasocial at best.

It’s also worth asking whether galvanizing the public and winning them over to socially conservative causes should be conservatives’ end. Tribalism, even when well-intentioned, doesn’t translate to virtue in the group’s individual members. If the goal is cultural renewal, individual virtue is essential. Political or ideological tribalism will never be enough to authentically transform hearts and minds.

When, then, will cultural renewal actually happen? It’s hard to say, because if someone knew the answer, we would already see renewal happening on a large scale, and (to put it mildly) it’s not. But perhaps one way is to resist the strange allure of brand culture, archetypes, and movements, and to instead pay attention to the unglamorous yet fruitful principles that have sustained humankind for centuries. For conservatives, this means not just “talking right” but also “walking right,” that is, loving the families we’re telling everyone to have, serving the communities and institutions we claim are so vital to social and individual flourishing, and on an individual level, committing always to living more fully in the truth.

It is naïve to expect to be able to avoid digital media and brand culture altogether, nor should we try to; after all we were “made for times such as these” and these are inevitable features of the times we live in. There are many good purposes and intentions in the information we disseminate and the ways we do it; it’s not all bad. We’ve seen, for instance, the undeniably powerful legacy Charlie Kirk left before his tragic assassination: in the days after his murder, social media platforms teemed with personal accounts of how his content had influenced them to learn more about Christianity, to confront their own preconceived and badly informed ideas about issues from abortion to gender ideology. Figures like Kirk are vital to our culture and have the power to turn hearts toward truth. At the same time, we need never forget the reality that like any of our human attempts to convey truth, spread goodness, and exhibit beauty, any content that we create or consume is a mere shadow of enduring truths. And it is up to each individual, once attracted to the shine of truth, goodness, and beauty conveyed online, to develop opinions, views, and personal convictions further, in a way that endures long beyond the initial attraction.