The biggest weakness of MAGA is we have no patronage system. Our guys make money with X monetization and small dollar donations from supporters, that’s it.
It’s frankly pathetic that 10 years later some of the biggest MAGA voices are in the wilderness with zero support.
This is why the left is able to destroy us in midterm and off year elections. They pay their people. They pay to get out the vote. They pay for vast numbers of NGOs and sinecures. Their donors fund their patronage network extremely well. They even set up the government to fund their patronage network. Even useless counterproductive losers like Harry Sisson and that fat linebacker woman are raking in millions.
If Trump and MAGA are serious about maintaining a lasting political legacy this needs to change. People have been in the trenches for 10 years, taking shots from every power center in the world. You can’t leave people on an island for that long. Eventually the benefits need to outweigh the costs.
Everyone who's accusing Oliveira of being cowardly needs to understand that what happened to him is a microcosm of why the left always wins; because the right never stands up for anyone.
I've been covering H-1B visa and related issues here more or less full time for two months now. In that time:
- Numerous Indians have sent me death threats, both publicly and in DMs, with X doing nothing (I've catalogued more than a few of those threats). They've also threatened my family.
- Indians compromised one of my crypto wallets and stole my money.
- Indians mass report my posts to get me banned, abusing the fact that if you report someone long enough, they're automatically locked/limited/suspended with no human involvement.
- Indians abuse the Community Notes system to flag my posts with false notes, which is a direct attack on my income since any post that gets community noted is exempt from monetization.
- I have cause to believe I'm being physically stalked by Indians. I was warned when I began covering this beat that Indians working at banks and so forth would attempt to screw with my financial accounts, car insurance and so forth. I've spoken to other journalists covering this beat and they told me I'm not being paranoid and they themselves have been stalked.
That's what I'M facing. Oliveira is a FAR better known figure than me. I can't imagine what he's been dealing with. It's easy to say "release the video, don't apologize" when you haven't faced this level of concerted criminal harassment. Are the updoots he gets on YouTube gonna be worth it if an Indian decides to firebomb his house with his kids inside or shoot him while he's leaving 7Eleven?
I dealt with extensive criminal harassment from the left when I was covering the presidential campaign in 2016. My family was doxed after I reported on BLM marches in Chicago. Antifa obtained my then-girlfriend's phone number and harassed her. I was physically stalked multiple times and threatened by antifa. And of course, I was deplatformed, getting banned from Twitter three times in the course of a year. Some freaks once tried to blackmail me over something I wrote by threatening to go after my parents. I couldn't live with myself if something happened to my parents or whoever because of something I wrote. That's how they get you.
And there's no institutional backing protecting us. I myself got institutional backing recently only to have it taken away without being told why. Do you know how many good, smart, talented MAGA people gave up on journalism and advocacy during Trump's first term because of the infighting, betrayals, and abandonment when we needed it the most? They either quit the Internet entirely or pivoted into manosphere slop, self-improvement, or some other grift. This work does not pay and nobody is getting rich off it. We do it because we believe in it, but belief doesn't pay the bills, it doesn't unsuspend our accounts, it won't stop a bullet from a psycho freak stalker.
Bad money drives out good. I despite Nick Fuentes, but what his Con Inc. critics don't understand is that THEIR actions is why he exists. I don't mean their Zionism. I mean their abandonment/cancellation of any positive, good force in citizen journalism and content creation. A "scene" defined by internecine backbiting and constant betrayals over petty personal conflicts is one that rewards psychopathy. Nick Fuentes is a psychopath and he's successful because of that, because anyone who isn't a psychopath eventually gets exhausted with being attacked/harassed/stalked with no support from their "allies" and quits.
I myself quit in 2017, got a job that had nothing to do with my online activity, and dedicated my time to building an apolitical book publishing company. When I first moved to Guadalajara in 2021, I met a guy who posted a pic with me on his Instagram and his followers were responding "Wow, Matt Forney? I haven't heard about him in years!" Yeah, because I quit. I quit because there's only so much abuse you can take with no one backing you up---particularly when this is not financially lucrative---before something in you snaps.
This is why the left wins. Because the right just allows their best figures to be hounded to death or actively hounds them to death themselves. And if you don't want your favorite journalist/writer/content creator to eventually tap out, you need to support them when they need you. I had hoped Charlie Kirk's assassination would have convinced some people of the stakes. Once again, I'm hoping against hope.