“Kanye’s been watching [my] stuff for a while,” Ali Akbar, a former Tea Party operative-turned-MAGA pundit, told me with glee over the weekend, referring to the sudden emergence of Kanye West as a conservative-media celebrity. A month ago, the idea would have seemed absurd: Akbar, who frequently reminds his viewers that he’s black and Arab, is best known for producing videos with far-right conspiracists like Mike Cernovich and Lucian Wintrich, and his lengthy philosophical rants, which he live-streams with the use of an iPad in his home office. Last week, however, amid a stream of pro-Trump tweets, the legendary rapper and cultural behemoth shared two of Akbar’s videos. West’s liberal fans wondered if he was having a public breakdown, or was merely misinformed. The right hailed him as cause célèbre.

West, of course, has been linked to Donald Trump before. During his Saint Pablo Tour in 2016, he said he “would’ve voted for Trump,” and he later posed for a photo with the president-elect in Trump Tower. But his renewed enthusiasm in recent days for Making America Great Again—retweeting figures like Akbar and Candace Owens, publicizing his debates with John Legend and T.I., and declaring that he and the president are brothers who share “dragon energy”—nevertheless caught the wider world off guard. Akbar, who claims West began watching his content in October after someone sent it to him, was less surprised. According to sources I spoke to, West is a fan of Jordan Peterson, the controversial Canadian professor who has attracted a cult following of disaffected young men, and whose self-help philosophy has become something of a gateway drug for those flirting with the far right. (West himself has hinted at this affiliation, tweeting a video of a TMZ page with a Peterson video in an open tab.) Earlier this week, he had lunch with the leadership of Turning Points USA, the conservative nonprofit best known for maintaining a “watch list” of university professors who “discriminate against conservative students.”

The red-pilling of Kanye West marks a turning point for the conservative-media universe, which has undergone a revolution in the months and years since Trumpism took over Republican politics. In that time, the movement formerly known as the alt-right has splintered: trolls like Milo Yiannopoulos have flamed out; white nationalists like Richard Spencer have failed to go mainstream; rabid conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones remain a sideshow; the vanguard of the populist-nationalist movement, Breitbart News, and its former chairman, Steve Bannon, have fallen out of favor. Instead, the dragon energy in the far right has been supplanted by a nebulous “intellectual dark web” comprised of right-wing pundits, agnostic comedian podcasters, self-help gurus, and disgruntled ex-liberals united by their desire to “red pill” new adherents—breaking the spell of political correctness, as Neo’s eyes are opened in The Matrix. For those hoping to rebrand as iconoclasts, rather than Breitbartian race realists, recruiting West was the shot in the arm they needed.

The anti-identity politics premise is potentially an appealing one for a certain brand of self-made superstar, and nobody’s eyes are now open as wide as Kanye West’s. “Everyone who I’ve talked to who’s very familiar with the situation around him right now says that he’s super creative. He’s in his own world, but he’s super strategic,” Akbar said. “I hear he’s never been happier which makes me really sad—these liberals online [saying] he’s mentally incapacitated? I’m like, this is so sad that you could praise Michael Jackson or Prince or Steve Jobs and Kanye can’t get a little bit of that respect.” Indeed, with the left in meltdown, the right has been overcompensating to show their appreciation. Donald Trump Jr. has been among the most high-profile Trumpists going to bat for West on Twitter, and nearly all of my conservative sources are suddenly obsessed with his discography. “I take it all back rap is great now,” conservative pundit Ben Shapiro tweeted last week, reveling in the absurdity of the reversal. He also issued a note of caution to any new right-wing fans: “Just warning you now: live by the Kanye, die by the Kanye.”