It’s safe to say that President Trump and the Republican Party are deploying a new form of political propaganda, updating a dark art for the platform era. But it’s also a signal that a new kind of political style is enveloping conservatism — one that is ruthless, inflammatory and designed for maximum viral reach.
It’s a style of politics that has been honed by the party’s young, extremist fringes for years. With Mr. Trump’s blessing, or indifference perhaps, this faction is emerging as one of the most influential forces in the party. These radicalized conservatives, some of whom are working as junior staff members and political operatives across the G.O.P., are showing us the future of conservatism, one demented post at a time.-- New York Times, "Trolling Democracy"
The quotation above has been captured from an article that appeared in The Times on Sunday, July 13, 2025. In the hardcopy version of the paper, the title of the article was different from the "Trolling Democracy" title that headlines the online version. In the print edition, the article, which was authored by Nathan Taylor Pemberton, follows this headline: "The Rise Of A Toxic Online Right."
A major focus of Pemberton's article is the growing celebration, from within the Republican Party, of media content furnished by "Groypers." His use of this term, which he did not define, made me aware that I am not exactly up on what I guess is the "cutting edge" of our modern media. I had to look up this term, and I found, from Wikipedia, that "Groypers" are "a group of alt-right and white nationalist activists led by Nick Fuentes. Members of the group have attempted to introduce alt-right politics into mainstream conservatism in the United States and participated in the January 6 United States Capitol attack and the protests leading up to it. They have targeted other conservative groups and individuals whose agendas they view as too moderate and insufficiently nationalist. The Groyper movement has been described as white nationalist, homophobic, nativist, fascist, sexist, antisemitic, and an attempt to rebrand the declining alt-right movement."
Pemberton warns us that what began as an attention-grabbing effort by disaffected young people is starting to precipitate into an actual political ideology that is building real political power, and that calls for a fundamental restructure of our form of democratic self-government - pretty much as outlined in the Wikipedia article I just cited. "Pepe The Frog," as seen above, is the movement's mascot.
The Pemberton article particularly struck me because I had just read a similar analysis, presented in a much more scholarly form by Roger Berkowitz, the Founder and Academic Direction of The Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. Berkowitz' article also appeared on Sunday, July 13th and was titled, "Arendt and MacIntyre on Corruption And Power." If you click that link, I don't think any paywall will prevent you from reading what Berkowitz has to say.
Here is how Berkowitz concludes his article, calling upon us to "act together."
Arendt offers a different response to the unmasking of moral hypocrisy and the descent into the fascination and justification of power. Her approach is not to limit power, but to remind us that human beings are political, that the search for meaning is necessarily collective. If we want to build a meaningful world, we need to act together, and power, Arendt understands, is “acting in concert;” it aims not simply at actualizing our individual wants but at building a meaningful public world.
To build power does not mean to impose or import a moral order. Rather, power comes from speaking and acting together. In talking with others, we confront not only the reality of disagreement but also the possibility of a world held in common. It is easy to forget that while disagreement is a real fact of life, so too is agreement; in fact, we agree on more than we disagree.
Arendt reminds us that politics begins not in the glee of unmasking others, nor in the vulgar satisfaction of exposing hypocrisy for sport, but in the dignity of being recognized and approved when we appear before one another, in word and deed. Against the seduction of power unbound by truth, she offers a more demanding freedom: the freedom to build a world with others, bound not by ideology but by the fragile, plural, and persistent effort to understand and be understood. In an age addicted to performance and cynicism (not to mention the seductions of artificial intelligence), this kind of power — rooted in mutual recognition rather than domination — offers our most radical hope (emphasis added).
Let's focus on this prescription. The necessary elements are: (1) action, (2) together, to (3) build a meaningful [political] world.
We do live, as my blog title proclaims, in a "Political World." Let's shape it together! Forget that Frog!
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