It’s hard to believe that as of this week ten years have passed since Donald Trump walked down the golden escalator at Trump Tower and ignited a political movement to reclaim our country. For those of us who have been part of this story since the very beginning, it has been an extraordinary journey full of unexpected challenges, fierce resistance, and moments of real hope.
I founded Gab about a year after Trump launched his campaign, motivated largely by the shocking reaction of Big Tech to his message. Almost overnight, the same Silicon Valley elites who had spent the better part of two decades preaching the importance of individual liberty and free expression transformed into the very thing they once claimed to oppose. They embraced heavy-handed censorship and treated ordinary Americans as heretics for supporting the principles that have underpinned our nation since its founding. Suddenly, we found ourselves branded as political dissidents in our own homeland, simply for defending our sovereignty and the fundamental values that make America unique.
At this point I have spent almost a quarter of my life building this company and helping push this political movement forward. I walked away from a lucrative Silicon Valley career because I believed my country, my people, and my faith needed a refuge where free speech—and therefore truth—could survive. The sacrifices have been real and mostly invisible, seen only by God, but I would make them all again without hesitation to get to where we are today.
The past three years have been a particularly transformative chapter in our story here at Gab. When Elon Musk acquired Twitter and steered it back toward free speech, it felt as though the battle had been won. The perspectives we championed, once dismissed as fringe, now dominate conversations on that platform and beyond. Our ideas have burst through the Overton Window, shaping the broader cultural narrative. No longer “dissidents,” we are now a leading force in both politics and culture, especially among the youth. With so much of what we stood for becoming mainstream, I found myself asking: what’s next?
Gab spent six years as a fortress and incubator for ideas that have since become mainstream. Through the elections of 2016, 2018, and 2020 Gab alone held the line on free speech. When the world shut down during Covid any and all dissenting discourse was shut down with it on the entire internet, except on Gab. Topics like mass deportation, the great replacement, and foreign influence in our government found safe harbor and room to flourish in Gab’s free speech environment. Today, major influencers, pundits, celebrities, and politicians echo the conversations we once had among ourselves. In this sense, we have achieved a resounding victory: the truth prevailed.
As our movement transitions from the fringes to the forefront of society, it is vital for what was once called the “dissident right” to reconsider both its mission and its responsibilities. For years, “dissident” meant outsider: we were condescended to, maligned, and systematically excluded from mainstream discussions. That era is coming to an end. Our ideas and values now shape public discourse and enjoy growing influence, especially among the youth.
We are no longer confined to the shadows, nor are we merely objects of scorn or curiosity. With this new reality comes a profound obligation. We cannot rest on the laurels of past victories or confine ourselves to simply critiquing or reacting to a decaying establishment. Now is the time for us to build, to govern, and to embody the positive alternatives our critics never believed we could envision. Our challenge is no longer simply to oppose; it is to create—to set higher standards for ourselves, our families, our communities, and our entire nation.
The right must now devote itself to vision and institution-building. This is a historic opportunity to invest in creating robust institutions across every sector from media, technology, education, business, and culture that reflect and reinforce our values. Complaints and endless opposition are not enough; we must foster growth, foster talent, and build infrastructures that will outlast any passing trend. Now more than ever, we need constructive leadership and positive statesmanship. With the Overton Window shifted in our favor, expectations are higher. We must show integrity, maturity, and wisdom in daily life and public engagement. It is time to provide real solutions to pressing issues and to lead by example not simply as opposition, but as those responsible for restoring order and morality.
Self-reliant, resilient communities, both digital and physical, are essential for the coming years. We have already witnessed the power of alternative social networks and financial systems like bitcoin. Next comes the expansion of homeschooling co-ops, mutual aid networks, and businesses aligned with our values. The goal is to form sustainable, interconnected communities that support our people and way of life, with or without the approval or support of hostile structures.
If we are serious about taking back our institutions and shaping the future of our nation, we must turn our attention to developing a new class of leaders, our own elites. The decline and corruption of the old establishment has made it clear that inherited status and unearned positions of power produce nothing but stagnation and betrayal. We need to nurture and elevate people within our movement who possess not only talent and vision, but also integrity, courage, and a deep commitment to our values. This means investing in education, mentorship, and real-world opportunities that prepare our brightest minds for responsibility and stewardship. Only by cultivating our own class of elites can we ensure that the institutions and systems we build will endure and reflect the interests of our people for generations to come.
Technology and information stewardship must also be at the forefront of our priorities. As AI and other digital tools transform the fabric of society, it is up to us to ensure these tools serve our interests rather than those of adversarial ideologies. That means building true alternatives—like we are doing with Gab AI—and raising awareness about digital literacy, privacy, and ethical technology. We must not allow these powerful new tools to become the weapons of our opponents.
Above all, our endeavor is as much a cultural and spiritual renewal as it is a political one. With a real foothold in public life, we must double down on reviving our foundational values: faith, virtue, family, honor, and truth. We can no longer draw our energy exclusively from opposition to the establishment; we must provide a higher vision that motivates and inspires.
A revealing chart has been circulating online recently, illustrating how the right now encompasses true diversity of thought while the left has consolidated around a singular, rigid, almost cult-like set of beliefs. Within our movement, there is healthy debate, innovation, and disagreement: proof of a living intellectual tradition and vibrant future. The left, meanwhile, polices its boundaries with ideological purity tests and ostracizes even small deviations from the party line. This dynamic shows that our battle of ideas remains essential, but not in the way it was before. We are no longer in a contest of ideas with the left, which has isolated itself in a diminishing cult. Instead, our greatest task is to keep up the pressure internally, to push out the old guard and the remnants of the crumbling postwar consensus that still maintain footholds within our side.
The simple fact is, these holdouts of the old order still control many institutions and much infrastructure. They command access to capital and levers of power that we lack—for now. This makes the road ahead clear: our strategy must become a two-front campaign. First, we have to keep building institutions, communities, technologies, and businesses until we are truly independent and unassailable. Second, we must maintain our momentum and dominance over cultural discourse, driving out the old guard gatekeepers and insufficiently committed voices inside our own ranks. Our future depends on never becoming complacent and on making sure that our movement remains principled, creative, and alive with genuine debate.
The era of the “dissident right” has ended because we are no longer strangers to power or to the mainstream. Now our responsibility is to lead, to build, and to make good on the promises we voiced in exile. The coming years demand more courage, vision, and dedication than ever before. Let’s be worthy of this new era and the world we hope to create.
While the fight to secure free speech was once the defining struggle of our time, the landscape is constantly evolving. As we step into a new era, the challenges before us are different, yet no less urgent or consequential. The nature of the internet itself has changed dramatically, so much so that the threats we face now are as much about the integrity, authenticity, and sovereignty of our digital communities as they are about free speech. The forces seeking to undermine us have adapted, using new technologies and exploiting new vulnerabilities, and we must be ready to respond with innovation and resolve. The journey isn’t over; if anything, it is entering a critical new phase that demands our full attention and unwavering commitment.
The internet of today is a far cry from what it was a decade ago. Hundreds of millions from the Third World have joined the digital landscape, transforming its nature entirely. On platforms like X, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, a staggering proportion of “engagement” is inauthentic—driven by AI or by cheaply hired click-farms. Distinguishing between the two can feel impossible.
While stopping the demographic invasion of our cities may be outside our power for now, safeguarding our online communities is a fight we can win today. Every year, Indian scammers defraud Americans out of $10 billion. Botnets based in obscure countries manipulate trends and narratives to divide and demoralize our people. Foreign “influencers” with no stake in our nation feel entitled to tell us how to run it. Why should we tolerate this?
Gab has taken decisive—if predictably controversial—action to shield our online space. We have blocked IP ranges from many foreign, Third World countries and restricted VPN access for non-customers. In doing so, we have chosen not to engage with scammers, botnets, and foreign activists determined to undermine our community. Scams, fake engagement, and subversive behavior on our platform has ground to a halt. We intend to keep it that way. Gab Social is our home base. It’s the place where our people can network, build one another up, and get access to information without any third-worlder, botnet, or foreign subversive injecting themselves in the conversation.
Even more crucially, we are breaking new ground in AI. For the past few years, we have quietly developed Gab AI: an initiative dedicated to upholding both freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I’ve written an entire book on AI and the stakes of our work, but at its core, our mission is clear: ensuring that artificial intelligence is not hijacked by anti-American, anti-truth, or anti-Christian agendas. Our own AI model, Arya, is purpose-built to reflect a pro-American, pro-truth, and pro-Christian worldview. No other company in this space offers anything comparable; in fact, every major AI provider from Silicon Valley—including Elon’s Grok—leans heavily left. With Gab AI, you can try all of them side by side in our dashboard, underscoring our commitment to freedom of choice.
Big Tech dreams of building one AI to rule them all—a monopolistic impulse that has already proved disastrous with Google’s search dominance and Facebook’s social monopoly. The power of AI makes those previous monopolies look quaint by comparison. We cannot, under any circumstances, allow one company to control this new frontier; not even Gab should wield that kind of power. That’s why we’ve integrated every top AI model both open-source and closed-source alike into Gab AI. Use them all, compare their outputs, or even build your own custom AI aligned with your worldview. Freedom of choice is our guiding principle, and on this front, Gab AI leads the way.
Looking back on these past ten years, it’s clear we’ve come a long way from being silenced and ridiculed outsiders to shapers of national and cultural discourse. The battle for free speech was only the first chapter, and we proved that truth and courage can shift the course of history. Now, a new set of challenges awaits us: preserving authenticity, defending our communities, and shaping the digital and moral landscape for the next generation.
The future of the movement, and indeed of our nation, depends on our ability to innovate, to hold the line within our own ranks, and to push back against the remnants of the old order who would prefer stagnation over progress.
As Gab enters its next decade, we remain steadfast in our mission to defend not just freedom of speech, but the very principles of choice, sovereignty, and association that make a free society possible. We’re building the technology, the platforms, and the communities that will define tomorrow, with faith at our foundation and truth as our guide. That’s our role in this next phase of this movement, what will yours be?
This is our calling and our opportunity: a chance to cement the gains of the past and lay the groundwork for a flourishing, free, and unafraid America. The next chapter is still unwritten, and it belongs to those who dare to shape it. Let’s rise to meet this moment together.
