DEBATE: Can Conservatives/Libertarians Succeed in Entertainment?

Can you actually succeed in entertainment if you’re right of center, conservative, or libertarian? My short answer is yes. But you have to be realistic about what you can get, or you’ll spend years banging your head against a wall wondering why it isn’t working.

I’m not blackpilled on this at all. I’ve built a company that has worldwide sales and nationwide trade distribution despite my views being public for well over a decade. But I’m also not going to sugarcoat it.

Here’s the landscape. Progressivism is essentially the only set of public views you can hold in entertainment without facing economic consequence. If you’re right of center and open about it, there is a ceiling. It’s not fair, and you can complain about it, but that’s the reality, and it was the reality long before the Rippaverse. I dealt with it in music with my bands first.

And the biggest reason isn’t infiltration or conspiracy. It’s asymmetry. Most people on the right do not use politics as the primary factor in deciding what they’ll consume. Plenty of people on the left do. That difference compounds across every industry, every board, and every major IP.

It also shows up in where the money goes. There’s no shortage of right-leaning people with capital. They just don’t treat entertainment as something worth building. If you’re in oil and gas, or AI, you have a real shot at support. In entertainment, people will talk about cultural influence all day and then not change a single habit or fund a single competitor. Meanwhile the major studios run entire programs dedicated to advancing social causes, and the legacy IP everybody grew up on has essentially no conservative or libertarian footprint behind it, with a couple of notable exceptions.

So what are your options?

You can work in the mainstream and keep your views to yourself. That works, right up until someone decides to come collect.

Or you build independently. That can absolutely work. It worked for us. But it takes a long time, you have to know how to maneuver, and you need to accept that you will never be adored the way mainstream creators are, no matter how talented you are. I’ve seen incredible musicians, artists and writers on the right who are genuinely excellent and still feel banished to their corner. That’s why so many of them end up signaling only to people who already agree with them. It’s often the only way to get that audience to look up.

The way through is becoming undeniable. Not ignored. Undeniable, to the point where working with you is plainly worth it regardless of what anyone thinks of your politics. That’s the only route to the big collaborations.

And remember the world isn’t the internet. Most people, including most people who’d agree with you, don’t care who offended who this week. They see something cool attached to an IP they like and they buy it.

Discovery is your best friend. It takes effort in both directions.

What most people actually want isn’t a world where every creator agrees with them. It’s balance. Some space for escapism, where people can nerd out together without politics and without worrying about being cancelled for holding a position somebody disagrees with. I’m right there with you on that. You just have to be realistic about the world as it is right now.

So don’t be blackpilled. There’s a lot you can do. You just have to work.