At first blush, it seems as if conservatives have won a major victory in their war against so-called woke capital. After two weeks of growing backlash against Bud Light’s support for trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, the company’s chief executive came out with a non-apology apology: “We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”
Predictably, this only worsened his predicament. On Monday, the Advocate, an LGBT magazine, ran an op-ed calling for a counterboycott to punish Anheuser-Busch for failing to support its LGBT icon.
Regardless of which side manages to mount a larger boycott in the dispute, one suspects that major brands will now think twice before diving into this particular culture war — which is, of course, exactly what conservatives wanted. Before they take a victory lap, however, they should ask what these sorts of maneuvers are doing to their own brand.
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Mulvaney’s most outspoken opponent is probably Matt Walsh, a podcaster and columnist for the Daily Wire, a conservative news website. Among his other claims to fame, Walsh starred in the 2022 documentary “What Is a Woman?”, which shows him asking that question of a gender studies professor, transgender medicine specialists and activists, and then waiting, deadpan, while his subjects squirm and dodge and fail to answer.
Walsh was going after Mulvaney even before the Bud Light deal; in February, he delivered a rant in which he accused Mulvaney of “intentionally degrading women” with a “woman-face minstrel show routine.”
Follow this authorMegan McArdle's opinions“Dylan, if that is the most attractive you will ever look,” he continued, “then I don’t even want to imagine what you’ll look like when you’re at your ugliest. You do not pass as an attractive woman or as a woman at all.” When news of Mulvaney’s Bud Light promotion broke, Walsh announced that the beer tasted like “malaria and rust” and supported a boycott of the brand.
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This sort of thing has earned him a wide following, and may well have helped scare Anheuser-Busch into stepping back. But this kind of meanness alienates at least as many people as it attracts.
Political activism can be divided roughly into two categories: dominance and draw. Dominance uses threats to force opponents to submit — think of violent protests, or cancel-culture campaigns to get someone fired. Draw moves, on the other hand, attempt to widen the coalition, to persuade other people to join.
Dominance moves can be effective, of course; just ask the executives at Anheuser-Busch. And they’re a lot of fun for those who execute them successfully, fostering a sense of solidarity among allies and a rather intoxicating feeling of raw personal power.
Unfortunately, in politics, the joy of a given tactic can be inversely correlated with its effectiveness. In this case, the thrill of dominance comes at a high cost. The dominator makes implacable enemies of the dominated, and also alienates a lot of onlookers, because people don’t like bullies.
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Conservatives ought to know this, because they have in recent years been able to capitalize on the excesses of cancel culture. (True, they weakened their position by appointing Donald Trump as their avatar: Rather than offer a sane refuge from the rhetorical Robespierres of cancel culture, they asked people to pledge fealty to a different bully.) They understand that bullying has cost progressivism a lot of support among moderates, including on issues surrounding transgenderism, where successful efforts to stifle public discussion of basic questions — such as “What Is a Woman”? — have led to resentment and backlash rather than consensus.
Conservatives are also aware, or ought to be, that they live in a democracy in which meaningful action requires a lot of supporters. Somehow, they have to get to 50+1 on issues — and there is no prize for second place. So in the longer political game, draw moves are better than dominance moves. It’s just that they’re not nearly as much fun. Draw moves mean submitting to the whims of others — placating, persuading and finding compromises that require real sacrifice.
This is why conservatism keeps gravitating toward bullies and boors who cost them elections. But if they someday decide they’d like to try to expand their coalition, they could do worse than to study Mulvaney.
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Whatever you think of Mulvaney’s transition, or her rather cloying girlishness, it’s easy to understand why she has accumulated more than 10 million TikTok followers over the course of her online transition: She makes life, and being trans, seem like such fun. She traffics not in anger or cruelty, but in whimsy and joy. Where Matt Walsh offers enemies, Dylan Mulvaney aspires to exuberance. She suggests the possibility of making yourself, and the world, into something better, while Walsh promises, at best, only the dour satisfaction of being right about how terrible everything is. It isn’t surprising that the kids are choosing Mulvaney over that.
But Walsh is right, his followers cry. Even if he were, it wouldn’t justify his tactics. In the court of public opinion, truth is not necessarily a sufficient defense.
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