"Right-wing Art" and its patronage

The Daily Wire acts like they're the only ones making it.

Matt Walsh made another movie.

A couple of years ago, conservative scold and lumberjack cosplayer Matt Walsh (a.k.a. Ben Shapiro’s pet beard) created the documentary What Is A Woman? wherein he went about asking leftoids if they could determine what this word actually means. The answers were as varied as their hygiene levels, and the film was received along demographic lines as you might expect. Right-Wing types stated clearly that a woman is a biological adult human female, and the Left-Wing types said it was anyone who said he or she was a woman, and never should the concept receive further scrutiny.

Among the Right-Wing circles though, there was discussion as to the merit and purpose of this film. Some asked “What did this actually achieve?” Personally I thought it might sway a few fencers, but otherwise the chief function of the movie would be historical preservation. In the event that the cultural dialogue around sex and gender ever stabilizes and returns to sanity, it will be important for future generations to know just how stupid everything has been for the last decade or more.

Well, apparently Matt Walsh and his handlers at the Daily Wire thought the movie was a rousing success, and they greenlit a follow-up called Am I Racist?, wherein Matt went around the country in skinny jeans and a man bun to grift and humiliate critical race theorists.

For those watching at home, this is not difficult, and anyone from Gen X downward tends not to bother with it, but the primary audience for Daily Wire content is retired boomers, so here we are.

Now, in fairness to Matt, the movie has been a critical and box office success. Even my most cynical RW friend—a man with numerous PhDs—took his diverse wife to see this in theaters and he sang its praises. This guy has no more love for Matt Walsh and his stolen valor plaid than I do, yet he encouraged me to go see this film. (I won’t.)

And since I have not seen it, I’ll neither praise nor condemn it. On its face I don’t think it’s a bad concept; I’ve heard it compared to Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat, just punching from a different direction, and something like that could definitely work as an insightful comedy piece. I just don’t care enough to spend fifteen bucks and two hours on a conserva-corporate adaptation of Matt Walsh’s Twitter feed. I don’t follow him online because I find him vanilla, although at times he does good work.

Funnily enough that brings us to my next point.

Chris Rufo praised the movie, BUT…

With regard to the movie making the top 5 at the box office on its release weekend, journalist Chris Rufo said the following:

The Daily Wire is doing something that nobody had done previously: produce conservative content that can prove itself in the marketplace, without the support of the existing entertainment industry infrastructure, which would love to see them fail. People do not understand how difficult this is to do.

Chris, I’m sure most people do not. However, I’ve been a contributor at Upstream Reviews for the last three and a half years, along with close to a dozen distinguished colleagues in the indie publishing sphere. We’re nearing 500 posts on the site at the time of this writing, almost all of which shine a spotlight on quality art that exists outside of mainstream channels. And other than a few shout-outs on moderate YouTube Channels, we’re still fighting for traction.

We know exactly how difficult it is to succeed without institutional support. Especially from the institutions that claim to give a damn about people on “our side.” Institutions like The Daily Wire and its contributors, who between them have MILLIONS of followers across all major platforms.

We’re on the ground, in the trenches, doing the work to create and promote the scores and scores of books that exist as either neutral, Right-adjacent, or explicitly Right-Wing works, but the Daily Wire is adamantly beholden to the idea that they are the only ones pushing back in the creative sphere. Which makes it doubly hilarious that Matt Walsh had this to say about even the softest criticism of his latest film:

One of the reasons why conservative entertainment has been so abysmally awful for so long is that any time a conservative attempts to do anything remotely interesting or provocative, there are people on our own side lined up and ready to explain why it's morally problematic and non-Biblical

Search Matt Walsh’s tweets about anime and video games that are popular among the Millennial, Zoomer, and Alpha Right, and then re-examine this statement. Grab your welding goggles, because the irony might blind you. On this point I want to highlight the efforts of George Alexopolous, who has repeatedly popped up over the years to countersignal Matt Walsh whenever he skewers these highly successful forms of entertainment.

George, better known as GPrime85, is an independent illustrator and political cartoonist who (despite being an unmatched talent) has never been showcased by the Daily Wire, and has been stonewalled by Elon Musk’s staff for about a year on getting a subscribe function for his X account. The only big institution that even acknowledges his existence is Timcast, who showcased his art in Tim Pool’s studio and invited George on the show.

But yes, Chris, tell us indies how hard this is. Yes, Matt, tell us how annoying the scolds are. Teach us. We apparently don’t know enough about The Struggle.

Now here comes the question:

Is RW Art successful?

In the effort of fairness, this is a bigger question and could be its own video, but right off the bat I’ll highlight the most obvious example of a Right-Wing millionaire creator: novelist Larry Correia.

He’s been with Baen and other outlets since 2009, having started at the absolute bottom of the barrel, selling self-published copies of his book in his gun store and in friendly forums online. Now he owns a mountain. He just sent the manuscript for his 29th book to his editor, and he’s probably going to finish another one this year, knowing his work ethic.

That’s just one guy. Speaking of work ethic, let’s talk about Declan Finn, my editor over at Upstream Reviews, who writes finished-quality manuscripts far faster than his publisher can release and market them effectively. Go ahead and read HELL SPAWN, the first in his Saint Tommy NYPD series and tell me whether the book is A) good, and B) "Right-Wing.” Then tell me why more of the people in the Rufo/Walsh/Daily Wire audience haven’t picked it up yet. That’s without getting into his other numerous series, including the Star Trek-flavored WHITE OPS.

And if not, why not?

For every Larry Correia there are five Declan Finns and fifty Graham Bradleys—the writers who finish at least one book of publishable quality per year, that is either politically neutral, traditionally friendly, or flagrantly Right-Wing with regard to its values and concepts. (Let the record show that my books are the first two.)

Why aren’t us lower-tier types more successful?

Speaking for myself, I don’t know a damn thing about marketing. I’m also not getting the institutional help that Chris Rufo mentions above. Kudos to Daily Wire for building their own institution, but in a sense they’ve created a conceptual ouroboros, where it’s that very institution funding their artistic endeavors. The Daily Wire is first and foremost a news outlet that creates podcasts and articles, then sells advertising at a level that only Rush Limbaugh would be proud of.

Sorry bros, best I can do is a CDL and sleep deprivation, since I don’t want to ignore my kids more than my work schedule already forces me to do. I can’t create the books and also create the mega-institution with the mailing list and the subscriber base to make my work immediately viable.

And as a cherry on top, Matt Walsh isn’t doing that either; his movies aren’t an artistic narrative. He’s not telling a story, creating a popular genre piece, or inventing a new character for people to sink their teeth into; his movies are literally just protracted versions of his tweets, or slightly embellished versions of his podcast show. It’s the same content meant for the same people, repackaged into a new format and pressed into a new venue. Am I Racist? and What is a Woman? have garnered financial rewards and earned a spot in the national eye…

…but he’s not creating “Right-Wing art.” He’s just being Right-Wing, and putting that into an artistic space. Is this going to have a lasting, broad impact on the arts? On cinema and publishing? Or in ten years will he be remembered as a conservative Michael Moore with better hygiene and less seismic register?

Where does this leave us?

For clarity, I’m not saying that these movies shouldn’t exist. I’m interested in the long-term goals of The Daily Wire and the (few) outlets on the Institutional Right who want to make a buck off of the arts. That future remains to be seen and I’ll wait for it to unfold.

My beef here is that guys like Rufo think guys like me don’t know how hard it is to succeed without a big outfit behind us, and guys like Walsh whine when guys like me don’t line up behind whatever he puts out.

Oh my. How awful. Unfortunately my empathy runs low.

What needs to change?

First of all, the Institutional Right has to immediately stop acting like we’re not out here fighting this fight on the ground, after hours, with every spare moment we have. We are parents and spouses and in most cases, working stiffs running on caffeine and spite.

I punch a clock at midnight and work my forty year-old butt off for ten or eleven hours a day, burning four thousand calories running up and down a ramp out of a trailer, so I can come home, shower, raise my kids, and do it all over again. Despite that schedule I’ve published at least one book every year since 2014, and there are guys in my circles who do way more than that. And they’re damn good.

Second, and I’m hammering this for the third time now, people need to seek out boosters like Upstream Reviews so they can FIND Right Wing writers and creators, and patronize their work. Yes, it’s partially about money, about drumming up sales for these writers so they can expand their production. BUT, obviously it’s not all about money, because most of us are W-2 wagies and we’re still creating incredible works of art anyway.

Matt, Chris, WE ARE HERE. And if our response to Walsh’s latest movie stings a little, well, guess what?

We’re not leaving.