You could almost feel for Anna, the tedious nitwit described in the opening paragraphs of "The Young Women Leaving the New Right," a New York magazine feature by the writer Sam Adler-Bell. Tormented by, in Adler-Bell's formulation, the "overweening, haughty moralism of Peak Woke" (I suppose she and Adler-Bell may share the delusion that this ever was a thing), Anna dropped her flimsy, contrarian liberalism in the mid-2010s to become "a celebrated pundit of the New Right"—only to later discover, to her evident dismay and horror, that the New Right is a right-wing ideological movement of people with right-wing beliefs dedicated to furthering right-wing causes. That's rough, buddy!
Anna, you see, is "somebody, dispositionally, who likes to have a good time" (her words), a trait she shares with literally every human who has ever existed or will ever exist, but which she, a solipsistic bigot, believes makes her too raw for the kinds of social spaces where people think a joke must do more than put a hard R on the N-word to be funny. The "humorlessness" of the left—which is to say, certain types of people correctly regarding her as a boring moron—turned her off. She was, in her words, "in love with the frisson of transgression."
For this reason Anna decided to become a fascist. Later she discovered that the right-wingers organizing themselves since long before she was born around the idea that social progress should be reversed and rights withdrawn from certain types of people regard her as one of the types of people from whom rights should be withdrawn. Now she wants a new scene.
Exhausting self-flattery aside—"the frisson of transgression"? Transgress my ass, Vocal Fry Phyllis Schlafly!—an unthinking reflex toward naughtiness is a real thing (which most people have moved past by the time their permanent teeth look normal-sized in their faces). Likely everyone reading this or anything that can't be found in the picture-book section of their local bookstore has experienced it. The category error is to set your politics by that reflex. Maybe some people take longer than others to discover that the world outside of them and the people in it are real, and that even if you do not authentically believe things—even if you are a reprehensible ideological fashionista shopping for a party scene in your choice of whom to regard as authentically human and deserving of life—others do; that the Nazis you befriended due to your dispositional alignment toward having a good time, oh you dear sweet newt-eyed shit-for-brains, likely are, in fact, fucking Nazis, and not just fun guys to hang around with. Whoops.
Later, Anna will perhaps discover that the blithe pleasure-seeking nihilism that led her to her super-fun New Right pals is not in any profound way different from their out-and-out fascism—that "fun times for me, and the underside of my shoe for others" is in fact the immutable core of fascism, and that what made her a fascist is not so easily sloughed off by her deciding she does not want fashionable New Yorkers to regard her as one anymore. In the meantime, this is a service blog; it is here to help. One needn't become a celebrated pundit of the New Right in order to experience "the frisson of transgression"! In fact—to the incredibly dubious extent that there is anything the least bit transgressive about white right-wing ideology anywhere in the United States except for the kinds of self-selecting progressive spaces an aggrieved dispositional fun-liker could simply exit by walking through the nearest door if not committed to making oneself the protagonist of every story—becoming a celebrated pundit of the New Right is a pretty lousy way of experiencing that frisson.
Here at Defector we also are dispositionally some people who like to have a good time. Drawing on our years of experience in this capacity, we have brainstormed some better ways to experience the frisson of transgression, for anyone sincerely looking to do that, and not simply using the phrase "frisson of transgression" as a euphemism for their sociopathy.
- Get a stupid tattoo
- Have a bisexual phase
- Litter
- Smoke one (1) cigarette
- Do a swear word
- Steal a piece of candy from the store when you are 10 years old and be so consumed with guilt and fear that you barf
- Copy somebody's homework
- Let somebody copy your homework
- Tell Mom that you will mow the lawn this afternoon but then do not
- Join the DSA
- Shoplift from Whole Foods
- Pirate music
- Merge without signaling
- Share a streaming password
- Organize your workplace
- Leave the lid off the milk
- Bring back a souvenir worth more than $100 from an international trip and don't declare it at customs
- Drink OJ from the carton
- Quit your job
- Only floss once a day
- Never floss!
- Wear one of those boardwalk T-shirts with a sexual double-entendre like "Big Johnson" or whatever
- Vape at the movies
- Sneak Panda Express into the movies
- Sneak CVS candy into the movies
- In the self-checkout aisle, ring up a packet of Pokemon cards as a similar-sized packet of taco seasoning
- Tear the tag off your new mattress
- Convert to Islam
- Stick up for somebody who needs it
- Use a VPN
- Drugs (nothing too crazy)
- Tell a teacher to eat your shorts
- Go to Magic City Monday at the Atlanta Hawks game
- Jaywalk
- Do eco-terrorism
- Use your older brother's BB gun to shoot action figurines down the laundry chute
Now you do not have to become a fascist.
