Why is Jackson Hinkle? Part I
Jackson Hinkle would have probably remained an annoying person on Twitter if he kept to his schtick. His political positions can be documented all the way back to high school, where he was a writer for his school’s Triton Times newspaper[1]. In his photo on the paper’s website, he sports a jean jacket with some environmental pins and a Bernie 2020 shirt. His columns were about the need for a less carceral approach to how the school approached its smoking ban and arguing that homeless people should be given help with housing instead of spending more money on police enforcement. Cut to the present day, and Jackson is a guest on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program.
The process of going from a bright eyed progressive to a bitter conservative usually takes 50 years, but Jackson managed to do it in 5. What pushed him and so many others like him over the edge? I decided to plot that using his Twitter. Jackson started using the platform towards the end of 2019 in correspondence with his Youtube channel.
It's clear that Jackson was disappointed in/dissatisfied with the Biden Administration, a sentiment most young progressives in the US felt as the elder statesman began his term. #ForceTheVote was a movement by political commentator Jimmy Dore that petitioned progressive members of Congress to call for a vote on expanding Medicare to all US citizens[2]. The goal wasn't necessarily to pass the legislation, but to have members of Congress show their dedication to it. This didn’t pan out for many reasons.
Looking at his tweets from 2019-2022, there is a definitive tone change that occurred. Focus shifted from domestic affairs to things beyond America’s borders. Jackson also shows some attempt to weave existing grievances into each other. By February 16th, 2022, he had chosen to focus on the Freedom Convoy. He focused on it being a threat to capital (which is true) and not it being a threat to labor (also true) or a threat to anyone that doesn’t like the spread of disease by people in charge of going all over the country (truest of all, perhaps).
It’s clear that Jackson found a niche, if you look at the growth of his Youtube channel, you that can see steady growth that became stronger month over month. You can also see in late July that his total views cratered, presumably this is when he deleted most of his old videos and unofficially shed his pretense of progressivism. To be fair, his oldest Youtube video from six months ago also concerns the demonetization and suspension of his channel, so there were other reasons to delete videos.
Something clicked in April that pushed Jackson’s channel to gain more and more subscribers. His near exclusive coverage of the war in Ukraine was a lot more interesting now that it was clear there was no end in sight to the conflict. A glance at his account on Rumble (where he hasn’t deleted old videos) shows that this has been the focus of his content for over a year, occasionally broken up by coverage of Youtube debates.
Jackson’s mind wasn’t broken by the Biden administration, far from it. He staked his claim to an existing market for anti-interventionist media and slowly changed his coverage as the public face of American foreign policy went from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Ideological whiplash for Progressive anti-interventionists suddenly finding themselves at odds with many of the allies they gained during the Trump administration created a fertile environment for Pro-Russia content. With Russia’s robust media operations reporting from dozens of news sites and Telegram channels, content could be put out on a weekly basis with as much ambiguity as needed.
I have to commend Jackson on this model of content generation, it’s clearly worked, as evidenced by his appearance on Tucker Carlson. The particular focus on short and vague titles like “decay.”, “annihilation.”, and “idiots” shows a not misplaced confidence in the intrigue of his subject matter. But for as savvy a presenter Jackson may be, he often falls short as an actual political commentator.
For the second part of this story, subscribe to my paid Substack feed. It’s going to be much longer, and will delve into exactly how Jackson built his conservative media brand by accidentally breaking into Asian & African media markets. Expect a new article every other week.