If there is a right-wing cultural aesthetic in America, it is low-brow resentment. The old liberal-conservative tradition prized truth, beauty and the ‘the best which has been thought and said’. This has been shunted aside by a hair-trigger populism drawn to any cultural expression that scandalises progressive tastes. If people with graduate degrees hate it, today’s conservatives will love it.
Right-wing populists have a new cultural pin-up in Oliver Anthony, an ex-factory worker and singer-songwriter from Virginia. His track ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ has garnered 15 million views on YouTube in the space of a week and 1.5 million plays on Spotify in just five days. For each of those five days, it has also held the number one spot on iTunes.
The song is an ode to blue-collar Americans left to struggle by corrupt, self-serving politicians in Washington DC, which lies 100 miles north-east of Richmond. The anti-DC sentiment has made it an instant red-state anthem, helped along by endorsements from anti-liberal influencers like Matt
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