Thread by @wesyang

The identitarian monomania that started appearing in Salon.Com in 2011 was like Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors at the start

2019 was the year "responsible" entities chose to start feeding it the large infusions of blood it craved wesleyyang.substack.com/p/personal-note

Now there is some concern among the hardcore partisans that the monster they've been feeding for a half-decade may consume things other they intended washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

Including, of course, and above all, their own political power. Choosing to pivot toward more palatable messaging or to double down on lies and smears is tactical question; Sargent makes the case for the former.

But whichever way they go (and they are likely to do an unstable mixture of both, often in the same statement), it will all be in service of a in which a well-funded coalition of those who rent-seek off identitarian monomamia constitute an Iron Triangle

Change the message to increase voter appeal or stave off electoral defeat, sure. But unless they actually dismantle this apparatus within their ranks, it will be merely cosmetic.