-Steven Crowder dropped a bombshell on the compromised nature of Conservative Inc.
-The Daily Wire responds to Crowder’s points
-I analyze the bigger trends in the movement manifesting here
Steven Crowder has just dropped a bombshell accusing conservative broadcast companies of being in bed with Big Tech! We’re going to look at the stunning accusation, we’re going to see the response from one of those companies, and make sure to stick with me to the end because we’re going to find out what’s really going on here!
Steven Crowder, fresh from leaving the Blaze, dropped a bombshell on his program threatening to release a list of phony brand-name conservatives who he said are in cahoots with Big Media:
https://twitter.com/scrowder/status/1615417809529614336
So as you can see there, Steve Crowder is accusing one of the major companies in what he’s calling CON INC of basically accommodating and conceding to the very cancel culture that seeks to silence conservatives and conservative voices! Well, we didn’t have to wait long before the company that he indirectly accused spoke up, and that was of course the Daily Wire. Just hours ago, the Daily Wire released their response, Jeremy Boreing, co-CEO of the Daily Wire, uploaded a 50 minute video admitting that Crowder was, at least in part, talking about the Daily Wire and the contract or the term sheet that they offered him! It was certainly a generous offer, $50 million dollars for four years, that works out to a ‘million a month’, perhaps Crowder could do better than that if he were on his own. I mean, remember, Rush Limbaugh was signing contracts giving him $50 million dollars a year! He at one point signed a $400 million dollar 8 year contract! But of course, that was Rush, there’ll never be another like him! And in fairness, Jeremy Boreing, the co-CEO of Daily Wire, obviously took serious issue with Crowder and how he portrayed the situation. He made it clear that if Crowder didn’t like something in the contract, then they could red line it, they could negotiate, what’s the problem? And also, Boreing took issue with how Crowder is portraying HIMSELF in all of this:
https://twitter.com/LegendaryEnergy/status/1615942582709936129
So what sense should we make of all of this? Is Steven Crowder right? Is the Daily Wire and CON INC in bed with big tech? Or is Steven Crowder simply ignorant of how the business side of broadcasting works? And is he presenting himself with a content independence that he never really had?
I think there are two main dynamics happening here that will help us interpret what’s really going on; first and foremost, this is most obviously a controversy over the character and make-up of alt-media! Alt-media is part of a much larger split in our economy, where our nation is forging what scholars call parallel economies. And what we’re finding is that the economies are shaping around two diametrically opposed partisan beliefs and loyalties, what some scholars call red and blue economies. You’ll notice the emphasis by both Steven Crowder and the Daily Wire on the importance of ‘independence’ and being an ‘independent voice,’ that’s a reference to their fidelity to this mass de-coupling of the two economies away from each other. We, as consumers in a thoroughly red-state economy, a parallel economy, we don’t want the leftovers from the legacy media, that has so thoroughly aligned itself with the woke corporate economy. We want nothing to do with that; we want political analysis and commentary that’s reflective of our conservative values precisely because we believe those values are reflective of reality! Those infected with the woke mind virus have taken leave of their senses and we want analysis that’s far more clear-headed and precise! And for that, we have to literally go to a parallel economy; we have to go to alt-media sources, a parallel press, as it were, to better understand what’s going on in our world!
SO, with that dynamic in place, you can see Crowder’s concern: what the hell is the point of going over to a supposedly alternative media outlet, that’s supposed to be part of the burgeoning red state economy, if all it does is work in conjunction with the Big Tech oligarchs thoroughly embedded in blue state media!?! Crowder, it seems to me, is very concerned that THAT line of demarcation, that decoupling between the two economies based on two fundamentally antithetical worldviews, is being blurred by the Daily Wire. So WHY would he think that? Why is Steven so concerned about the Daily Wire basically betraying its viewers? Well the answer to that is found in the second dynamic of what’s going on; the dynamic that’s in effect pulling the two economies apart is what’s known as consumer politics. Consumer politics involves customers intentionally buying from companies that promote and support their political and cultural values, all the while REFUSING to purchase from those companies that actively oppose and offence those political and cultural values. And so consumer politics involves what are called boycotts and buycotts. Boycotts are the refusal to purchase from companies that offend our political and cultural values, and buycotts are intentional purchases from companies that support our political and cultural values.
Now, I bring up consumer politics here precisely because consumer politics are at the heart of cancel culture. We’ve all seen with our own eyes how corporations so quickly and easily buckle under the pressure from far left activists; remember, we went through this ourselves with the premiere of our movie ‘The Return of the American Patriot.’ We had two venues cancel on us out of pressure from a bunch of woke leftist agitators. The fuel that drives cancel culture is consumer politics, particularly the boycott side of things, and to fully close this loop, scholars are in wide agreement that the parallel economy that’s rising comes straight out of Cancel Culture, particularly with the banning of President Trump from Twitter and Facebook, along with the banning of Parler from AWS and the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, the banning of prominent conservatives from Shopify and PayPal and the like. That was the catalyst for (1) a massive exodus of users away from traditional Big Tech, and (2) a slew of investors pumping money into New Tech like Rumble and Truth Social, with an entire parallel economy emerging around that.
So those are your two dynamics that are operative here: the rise of a parallel economy, a red state economy and a blue state economy, that’s being fueled by consumer politics that deliberately boycotts and buycotts in accordance with our economic and political values, which is at the heart of Cancel Culture which CAUSED the rise of the parallel economy in the first place; so that’s how it all fits together. And so, in the midst of all of that, Steven Crowder is very concerned that the Daily Wire, in the end, is making concessions to cancel culture, in penalizing content creators for getting demonetized, the Daily Wire is, in effect, accommodating the very cancel culture that gave rise to alternative broadcast companies like Daily Wire in the first place! They have become what they were supposed to replace! That’s in effect, as I understand it, Steven Crowder’s argument, and we’re going to have to see how this all fleshes out; obviously Daily Wire disagrees, but regardless, make no mistake, these are the two dynamics — a parallel economy and consumer politics — that will keep resurfacing throughout this whole ordeal!
I for one, have to say, ironically, I think this is an indicator of our success! When you have public disputes like this, it’s a sign that the parallel media, the alt-media is growing by leaps and bounds; when contracts of $50 million dollars are turned down as insulting, and charges of capitulation to the legacy media are being leveled by both sides, ironically it’s a sign that we’ve arrived! In just a few short years, the parallel economy is utterly massive and promises to grow beyond our wildest dreams; let’s hope everything here gets sorted out. WE are the future, the parallel economy is the future; it IS time to leave the sordid legacy media behind!
