No Enemies To The Right

No.168: July 14, 2023

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Dear Friends,

Alastair Roberts is a rare theologian with the ability to write insightful essays in Twitter form. The other day he put together a thread on an approach to cultural engagement he calls “NETTR,” which stands for “No Enemies To The Right.” As much as I would love to just post his entire Tweet thread right here for you to read, I can’t because Elon Musk is having a temper tantrum and won’t allow Tweets to be reproduced in Substack publications. It begins here if you want to click over to read it. 

So I’ll have to summarize as I move along. The concept is easy enough to grasp: “We” are in a war with “Them,” and it is imperative that “we” maintain a united front. If you ever train your sights on anyone to the right you are undermining the cause of truth, justice, and goodness. You are aiding and abetting the enemy and you are therefore a traitor to the cause.

The NETTR mindset explains why, for example, one of the most despised and hated people on the right is David French, who to some extent seems to welcome the opprobrium. He freely took a new job at the New York Times to serve the familiar role of the “house conservative,” whose job appears to be telling New York Times readers what they love to hear: that the conservative right is full of hypocrites and terrible people. Now, I didn’t care for that career choice. He would have been better off sticking with The Dispatch, it seems to me, but it isn’t my life or decision to make. 

David isn’t wrong to see a need to aim rhetorical and analytical fire to the right (the right, after all, is full to the brim with hypocrites, liars, and grifters). But when that’s the sole diet you feed your readers, people are going to have a pretty intuitive case that you are a “useful idiot,” a servant of “the enemy.” French seems to embrace his role in the narrative his detractors have assigned him, and I think that’s a shame. Because the manner in which he fights the NETTR worldview actually reinforces the NETTR worldview. His criticisms of the fevered political right just strengthens the very convictions of the fevered political right—he is proving them right in their own minds. French is not spraying fire retardant; he is spraying gasoline. Writing one Op-Ed after another in the pages of the New York Times explaining how awful Donald Trump and his sycophants are is more a hindrance to the cause of clawing the conservative movement back out of Donald Trump’s hands than a help, in my view.