The Hypocritical Right
How could someone this young and virtually unheard of until a couple of days ago have such a long list of achievements?
Over the past week and a half a strange phenomenon most likely showed up on your social media timeline. A young man by the name of Brilyn Hollyhand was blasted onto the political scene by huge Conservative news outlets like the New York Post, who called him Charlie Kirk’s ‘protégé’, The Ben Shapiro Show, and Fox News. A video of Brilyn sitting in a private jet (that his friend owns and is letting him borrow for his new speaking tour) garnered 39 million views on X. Major Conservative political figures took to X to praise Brilyn and his supposed courageous willingness to go on tour and fight for American freedom and Conservative values – in the same way that his “predecessor”, Charlie Kirk, did.
Katy Faust, the founder of Them Before Us, a Conservative non-profit that focuses on child-first politics and rebuilding the nuclear family posted on X saying,
“I’ve never heard of this kid before. Sounds like this is his friend’s jet, but let’s pretend like it’s his. So what. He’s devoting his time and attention during freshman year to Charlie Kirk style campus debate. And conservatives are chewing the carpet because he’s rich? Do we or do we not want everyone modeling civic discourse? Or is it only rags to riches personalities that we can support?”
The governor of Texas, Greg Abbot, even posted about Brilyn saying,
“This young man, @brlynhollyhand, is doing a fabulous job of taking conservative ideas to college campuses across the country.”
There was also much backlash from many Conservatives who feel that Brilyn is inauthentic, fake, too preppy, and just plain weird. Even Antonio Brown (who isn’t Conservative, but is funny) posted on X saying, “We’re not going back to whatever this is”, in reference to Brilyn’s video.
But who is Brilyn Hollyhand? And why was there so much discussion about him over the past several days? I think the answer to the first question, who Brilyn is, will help answer the second question and will expose a massive problem at the heart of the Right-wing MAGA movement: a hypocritical “rules for thee but not for me” utilitarian attitude that will likely bring down the MAGA movement quickly and swiftly, if not corrected immediately.
To the first question, “who is Brilyn Hollyhand?,” a simple Google search will you give the basic information needed. He’s a 19-year-old freshman at Auburn University who grew up in Alabama and began his political journey at age 11 when he started his own Conservative Newspaper, The Truth Gazette. In 2023 he became the Chair of the RNC’s Youth Advisory Council, a role in which he is tasked with helping engage young voters. He has apparently written a book and is now on his “One Conversation at a Time” campus tour.
That’s a lot of accolades for a 19-year-old, don’t you think? How could someone this young and virtually unheard of until a couple of days ago have such a long list of achievements? Could it be because he spent his life working hard and clawing his way to the top, like his comparison, Charlie Kirk? Could it be because he read a lot of Ben Shapiro’s books and took his advice and worked his way through the RNC meritocracy and is now reaping the benefits of his labor?
No. If you take a closer look at Brilyn’s rise to fame and accomplishment, you’ll begin to notice some cracks in the surface. To begin, Brilyn’s father is the Vice President of a real estate company (that his grandfather owns – don’t you just love meritocracy?) that focuses on low income, affordable housing in Alabama. The company website boasts that their skill set includes,
“Utilizing the 9% and 4% tax credit program for public housing redevelopment.”
You know, the age-old Republican housing policy: steal money from taxpayers and make big and ugly apartment buildings and rent them out to people without jobs who have extensive criminal records and destroy neighborhoods and towns? That’s Brilyn’s father – a man who has gotten rich off Democrat policy.
But that’s just his dad, you can’t fault him for coming from money, right? Fair enough – but you can fault him for his inability to actually connect with the people he claims to be trying to reach. And you can fault him for taking on the flagrant and way-to-soon title of “protégé to Charlie Kirk”. One of the big differences between Charlie Kirk and Brilyn Hollyhand is that Kirk’s family wealth didn’t come from the very thing he claimed to fight against, government spending and intervention into the free marketplace. Kirk’s father owned an architectural firm that he built himself. Charlie Kirk dropped out of college and raised money to start his organization, Turning Point USA. He started with $10,000 and, I would assume, limited to no access to a private jet.
Hollyhand on the other hand (tongue-twister) has benefitted his entire life from his father’s willingness to play the system for personal gain. You have to ask yourself how someone who apparently started a newspaper in the fifth grade was able to interview such huge political figures like Ted Cruz, Sarah Huckabee, and Sean Hannity (to name a few) before he even turned 18. Why does this kid have special access to the largest names in the Conservative movement like Tucker Carlson and RFK Jr.? I would bet a lot of money that it has something to do with the fact that he comes from an extremely wealthy family with very good connections who got rich off of the backs of normal taxpayers.
But Brilyn and his family are only a microcosm of the hypocritical nature of the modern Right-wing movement. There are many figures within the “Conservative” movement who have the “win at all costs” mentality and are willing to live utterly inconsistent lives to win back their nostalgic 80s American Disneyland childhood.
People like Katy Faust, who I mentioned above, has in recent years gained prominence within Right wing circles for her apparent commitment to Biblical and Conservative family values, and her founding of an organization called Them Before Us has taken the utilitarian bait. She speaks at conferences and on podcasts about the necessity of two-parent, heterosexual, homes in which children can flourish and live without fear of neglect and abuse. She talks about the mother’s job to raise their children and the value of strong fathers who provide for their families. This all sounds good to a Christian Conservative like me until you dig just a little bit deeper.
For a woman whose whole schtick is rooted in the principle of subsidiarity, a concept she defines well in this video, you would bet that she herself is living this principle out in her own life and is aiming at conducting her own behavior in a way that is in alignment with it, right? Sadly, this is not the case. In my interview with her, I learned that she sends her own children to the public schools in the Seattle, WA area. This news was shocking to me as I, a 26-year-old from Madison, WI, saw firsthand what the most liberal public-school systems in America are teaching when I was going to them throughout my childhood.
But Katy Faust cannot see her own logical fallacy. She can’t see that her lecturing others on getting married, having babies, and raising those children to be civilized and flourishing human beings is in direct contradiction to sending her own kids to public schools in which postmodern Marxism is the philosophical foundation on which they are taught. You would be hard-pressed to prove to me that the millennials and Gen Zers in New York City who are about to vote an actual Marxist into office as their Mayor, Zoran Mamdani, were educated in Christian schools or homeschools. Not a chance – they are products of the public school system. And Katy Faust claims to fight that system by doing what? Supporting it through sending her own kids to it? Make it make sense.
This sort of hypocritical and illogical approach to “Conservatism” is found all over the place in the modern Right-wing movement. Women lecturing other women on living “trad” lives and being home with the kids while simultaneously filming themselves for hours on end neglecting those same children. Men in the Big Conservative good ol’ boys clubs talking down to us lowly peasants about meritocracy while using their positions of authority and power to give their unqualified children positions within companies and even the government that come with nice paychecks and eternal financial security.
Think of Tucker Carlson’s son working for JD Vance or the owners of the Christian book publishing company, Crossway, hiring their son as the CEO of the company before he even finished his Masters in Divinity, which is required for such a position.
The inconsistencies are every which way within the modern Right-wing movement. The desire to create systems of wealth that can only benefit those who are in power and have the right family connections is entirely the opposite of the American meritocracy. America was built on innovation and risk, not stagnation and greed. Bailyn’s situation is only the most recent in a long line of Right-wing Marxist power games in which the wealthy and prominent belittle the lowly and illegitimate by justifying their means to reach particular ends– those ends being personal peace and affluence.