Demystifying The Ideologies of Rich Men North of Richmond: A Former Conservative's Perspective

I wanted to very briefly share my unique perspective on the controversy around Oliver Anthony and Rich Men North of Richmond, a country song that has gained much popularity among conservatives and was referenced during the GOP presidential debate. Many seem baffled by Anthony’s attempts to distance himself from Republican politicians and the seemingly contradictory blend of working class pro-labor sentiments and conservative welfare-shaming (I cover the fat-shaming aspects more at the end of the last episode) in the song. But based on my experience in conservative movements, his reflect a long-standing subset of right-libertarian ideology that has always operated in a populistic, anti-political manner, seemingly calling out the injustices caused by late stage capitalism, but pointing the blame at vaguely defined enemies, while ultimately serving conservative policy objectives. This is largely the result of the proliferation of conservative media, and hence political confusion amongst rural Americans. I believe that further left ideas that are not in the mainstream of the Democratic Party may likewise be able to engage this population who are facing issues progressive policies can solve but are unlikely to identify with either political party, yet are still largely influenced by conservative ideas.

Programming note: A new full length episode will likely be posted in a couple days.

More on this at the end of last episode:

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
A lot of people in the mediahave seemed perplexed by Richmond North of Richmond
and the singer Oliver Anthony's seemingly contradictorystatements. But as a former Conservative who
was now on the left, itall makes sense to me. So I
was a conservative through the Tea Partyera from two thousand and nine up until

(00:21):
about twenty seventeen two eighteen, andduring that time there was a very prevalent
strain of conservatism, more of likea right libertarianism that had a populist bet
to it, that acknowledged a lotof these struggles and the hardships the working
class was going through in terms ofeconomic struggles economic inequality. Remember that the

(00:46):
Tea Party was spurred by the twothousand and eight recession itself, but they
claimed that things like high taxes,the declining value of the dollar, government
spending, and government intervention were thecauses of the working classes plight rather than
the true cause, which of courseis capitalism and all the outgrowths of it.

(01:11):
And there was actually a time inthe Tea Party movement where they would
acknowledge and say, the concerns ofOccupy Wall Street are valid, and these
are real problems, but our solutionis the one that works. Their belief
was that if you took the handof government off of the normal person,
if you removed regulations and you madethe country freer by limiting the role of

(01:34):
government, that it would alleviate poverty, economic inequality, and dependency, which
are basically the ideas that Oliver Anthonyseems to be alluding to. And this
end of conservatism was very disconnected fromRepublican politics. There was a very specific

(01:57):
end of it that was very conspiracyry oriented. Alex Jones I think is
the most well known exemplar of that, where they would constantly talk about the
decline of the value of the dollar, they would talk about high taxes,
they would talk about economic inequality,but they would blame it on this shadowy
New World Order type entity again ratherthan capitalism. And they would never say,

(02:23):
oh, yeah, we were inline with the Republican Party. They
would always consider themselves to be completelyoutside of the mainstream of the Republican Party.
And that's why Oliver Anthony has madestatements that he has where he seems
where he's basically saying he's not witheither party. Because this strain of thought
wouldn't have even though they were veryvery closely aligned with conservative politics, and

(02:46):
especially with the way conservative politics isnow, they would not acknowledge that.
Then now we have obviously Alex Jonessupported Donald Trump, and after Trump's election,
I think that was a big shiftin thinking away from completely shying away
from the Republican spotlight. But stillthat set of ideas does persist, and

(03:10):
I think it goes to show thata lot of the issues that rural Americas
facing are things that progressive and furtherleft ideas can solve, but there is
a general resistance to the mainstream ofpolitics itself. That's why I think that
further left groups further left ideas,just like the Conservatives managed to play a

(03:34):
lot of these especially disaffected white menin rural America through further right ideas,
we could use far further left ideasto bring them closer to the left,
especially that maybe some of these leftwing ideas are outside of the mainstream of
what the Democratic Party is pushing now, with reasonability politics and these things that

(03:59):
the moderate left is pushing that thisdisaffected population really doesn't want to have anything
with. So there's obviously there aresome significant problems with this narrative, with
the narrative of Richmond north of Richmond, there's the possible allusion to racial to
racial issues through that north of Richmonditself relating to the Union and Civil War,

(04:26):
and there's always that slight tinge ofracism and a lot of these conspiracy
theory type ideas, but a lotof it is just confusion and not knowing
who the true infringers of your libertyand your ability to maintain yourself financially are.
And of course you have the punchingdown with the welfare type remarks,

(04:47):
and that gets slid in there becausethey say, oh, yeah, welfare
is causing inflation, which is causingyour money that you work so hard for
to go down into the toilet.But if we manage to explain that no,
and this is a long process andit's going to take a long time,
but explain no, it is capitalismthat is causing these problems. Maybe
further left ideas that aren't necessarily themainstream of democratic politics can bring this population

(05:13):
into the progressive fold. And Ihave a lot of hope for that.
For more insights, please subscribe tothe Fixer Punk podcast. I cover a
little bit more of Richmond North ofRichmond at the end of the last episode,