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“No Enemies to the Right”
Many Christian Nationalists openly advocate a policy called NETTR (“no enemies to the right”).
The idea is that if you are fighting in a political battle, it is prudent to avoid infighting within the ranks of those whom you generally consider allies and co-belligerents.
If the broader culture is divided between leftists and non-leftists, and if it seems that there is danger of the leftists coming to dominate, the idea of NETTR is that all non-leftists have a shared enemy and therefore they should work to overcome this enemy.
Therefore, on this calculus, non-leftists should avoid overtly criticizing each other.
A major reason NETTR is wrong is that bad behavior always merits some level of disapproval.
Another reason the policy is wrong is that, in the hands of many who self-describe as “far right,” such a policy will give aid to ideas that are not actually on the “right” at all.
Two examples:
First, many people on the “New Right” have openly been rehashing ideas from the Old Left.
If people from the Old Left call themselves New Right, then does a NETTR policy means not criticizing the New Right?
What will come of such a policy? Such people are “Right” in name only. Do we have to avoid criticizing them? That’s unwise.
Second, many on the “Far Right” advocate anti-semitism and white identitarianism. Those ideas are not actually on the “Right” either.
These are personal bigotries that a person at any point on a political spectrum might choose to hold. Why do such bigotries merit a free pass?
If anything, we should notice that racial identitarianism and anti-semitism are vices most common today among leftists.
Those calling for a NETTR policy will therefore accomplish the opposite of what their words seem to mean: They call for a policy of not naming the very evils that the actual “Right” was always designed to combat.
But what is the actual “Right”?
The advocates of a NETTR policy consistently fail in defining this.
In American political discourse, a rational meaning for the term “Right” would be:
“Seeking to conserve the US Constitution and the vision of the Founding Fathers.”
(Another word for it would be “Americanism.”)
But what do racial identitarians, anti-semites, and fans of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman have to do with such values?
Nothing at all.
What can the actual “Right” gain by allowing its own antithesis into its ranks?
Again:
Nothing at all.
Principles
The advocates of the NETTR policy are not thinking in a principled way. What they mean by “Right” is only “the group of people who are willing to join me in opposing the left.”
But, since they have little ability to define leftist or rightist ideas, both groups' definitions will be ever-shifting.
In logic (and eventually in how movements play out historically) all you would have to do in order to redefine the moral boundaries of a NETTR movement would be to redefine the boundaries of leftism.
A NETTR policy thus places a movement’s own greatest enemies in charge of defining the boundaries of who will and will not be allowed to join its ranks. This is unwise.
The NETTR policy amounts to:
“Never disown anyone who claims to be on our team.”
Think about the deeper meaning of such a policy. Think about what it reveals about the kind of person who would have conceived it.
Such a policy could only come from a place of all-controlling personal insecurity.
NETTR means the willingness to abandon standards in order to survive.
In the long run, a movement of that kind will lose its standards--and its survival.
To Christians, the greatest concern about the NETTR policy is what it does to the sanctity of truth and to the soundness of teaching and our ability to live with integrity.
We should hate evil and speak the truth to our neighbors. This is basic. And advocates of NETTR cannot do it.
NETTR will hurt Christians morally. And it will hurt churches. It amounts to “playing politics” instead of putting off falsehood and every man speaking truth to his neighbor.
I will leave you with these questions:
Are there some truths about right vs. wrong that you are unwilling to tell people, because you are afraid they will be used against you? (Are you a coward?)
Do you prioritize “winning back the country” (or live action role playing about it) over the sanctity of truth? (What are you afraid of?)
Is the truth is ineffectual?
Then why are you afraid to speak it?
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