Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Say It Loud and Clear: The Alt-Right Has No Home in the Conservative Movement
With the ongoing controversy about alt-right figures appearing at speaking events for TPUSA and Daily Wire staff, it’s been encouraging seeing how these young leaders of the conservative movement are handling their presence. While I am disappointed in Michelle Malkin’s (which I wrote about previously), the next generation are handling the alt-right exactly as they should be. I am by no means a fan of Charlie Kirk, or his organization TPUSA, but I’m nonetheless uplifted to see how he handled this situation:
People who openly identify as white supremacists came to my event tonight
They have no place in the conservative movement
We must unequivocally denounce this vile ideology whenever it shows it’s ugly head
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) November 14, 2019
Published in General
Finally! The alt-right has never been part of the conservative movement! The term was invented to link white supremacists with conservatism via the term itself: alt-right (alternative right).
White supremacy is an alternative to conservatism every bit as much as modern liberalism is an alternative to conservatism. However, “alt-right” links them to us, and that’s not acceptable! Heck, even being on the right politically isn’t necessarily full bore conservatism (call it “leaning” toward conservatism).
We should ditch the term “alt-right”. Bury it. Don’t use it. Correct others who do.
On the bright side, to have these cretins attack conservative speakers is an indication available to even the most cognitively-challenged lefty that a sharp difference exists and that conservatives and white supremacists are clearly at odds.
Ben Shapiro spoke at Boston U yesterday, and according to my daughter, the first question after his speech asked why he was “smearing the name of ‘America first’ conservatives.”
I’m sure many thought-leaders on the left would be happy to lump the ethno-nationalist authorarians with everyone else who’s a classical liberal; all the same to them. <billyjoelvoice> Alt-right hate site redpill incel it’s still rock ‘n’ roll to me </billyjoelvoice>
I don’t know what the “Alt Right” is, since no one ever defines it. When the term first emerged, it seemed to refer to conservatives who knew how to use new media effectively. So naturally the Left (politicians and media) equated the “Alt Right” with racism, etc., in order to shut down these conservatives. The Left views everyone on the Right as a racist, so it doesn’t matter if we reject the “Alt Right” or not. In the end, I just don’t care that much. We should not spend energy on this, in my opinion.
I’d be happy to do so if there was agreement on what qualifies as “alt-right”. I prefer to denounce fascists of whatever stripe. If they are fascists, the have no place in the conservative movement. Fascists of some stripes might want to associate with conservatives; fascists of other stripes would not. But fascism is fascism and should be called out.
Hence the reason to drop the term:
white supremacists/facists=alt-right=right wing=conservatives
The equals sign between the two “right” words is how the left makes the link. We can’t get rid of the equals sign, so we have to get rid of the term to break the chain.
If you had had the misfortune to see a snippet of a Congressional hearing in which AOC was chastising Zuckerberg for his spending time with White Supremacists, and he then stated that it would be most important going forward to ensure that no such WS should be allowed to ever use his social media as a debating forum, some interesting thoughts might have occurred to you as they did to me:
Eh, they’ll just straight from “fascist” to “right wing” even though fascism is a Leftist ideology.
Amen.
Eh, we’re all racists to them anyway. It’s a waste of time to try the #NotAllConservatives strategy.
This is the point. No one who already believes right-wingers are racist is going to be swayed by denunciations of the “alt-right,” whatever that is. We constantly concede that racism is a right-wing phenomenon, when, in reality, the “progressive” Left is hateful, racist, bigoted, intolerant, anti-human (climate alarmism), and exploitative (see black neighborhoods in any major city run by Democrats). I don’t think conservatives should waste another second trying to make nice with these despicables.
To the extent the alt right exists in appreciable numbers, they’re from the other side of the political aisle much like the Nazis and the Marxists were from the same side. They fight with each other for the same political space against the same enemies. Their differences are not in behavior, tactics, tools, use of power, nor enemies, rather its’ the abstractions they use which the alt right understands much less than marxists do. Marxists have the advantage of a short pamphlet that explains everything coherently for them. The alt right doesn’t even have that.
And…….he said? All I can conclude is that they troll his lectures too much and ask too many of the same dumb questions (its a strategy they have). Oh, and their leader is a Holocaust denier.
Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin is getting favorable coverage on The Daily Stormer. They like that she’s running immigration interference for their anti-Jewish agenda.
Charlie Kirk certainly isn’t above criticism for some of his stances. In particular, his pro gay agenda. That said, I’m very skeptical/disturbed that so many 20 yr old males are more passionate about social than fiscal conservatism.
Nope, not going to say it.
When they say every white person is a racist just because they are white; when they say all men are rapists; when they are openly communist; I say everyone voting to stop them is important.
It’s a big tent. No need to cater to “alt-right” (however it’s defined on any given day), but if the “alt-right” join in stopping race hustling communists, I’m all for it.
I’m for freedom. The Bill of Rights. Property rights.
I don’t like the alt-right but I don’t like a whole lot of people in the republican party either. I especially don’t like religious bigots of the Dennis Praeger sort. But if he helps stop communist race hustlers then he’s on my team.
@bethanymandel
Here’s your problem – and it is the one that nobody really wants to address. We can make broad pronouncements like this and still lose the PR war because those hostile to anything right of center controls the narrative.
“We’re throwing out racists!”
“Anyone who wants border controls is a racist.”
“Democrats tolerate anti-Semites!”
“No. We oppose Zionists.”
Sorry, should have followed up, but I didn’t want to paraphrase my daughter’s paraphrasing, but I gather he told the questioner that the “America first conservatives” were a nasty, illiberal lot and that Fuentes was a Jew-hater.
That’s the idea. Eventually, every intermediate step vanishes until it’s a direct link.
Exactly why I have not commented on this and similar posts. I have no idea.
Mrs. Mandel, I think that the situation is much more complex than you indicate.
Kirk’s video is a tiny snippet. He claims that he was reacting to “white supremacists,” and perhaps he was. Or perhaps not. There is no context that would allow me to determine this.
If “alt-right” means genuinely racist and anti-Semitic, then I would condemn the alt-right. It is not clear to me that everyone labeled “alt-right” holds such views. I get the impression that the term “alt-right” is used very broadly, to include conservatives who are skeptical of high levels of immigration and concerned about issues relating to foreign trade.
For crying out loud, the Economist called Ben Shapiro an “alt-right sage” and “a pop-idol of the alt-right.” I don’t doubt that there are some people with reprehensible views, but it seems to me that this campaign of labeling people as “alt-right” and “white supremacist” is aiding the Wokeist media and its allies, who seek to marginalize legitimate conservative opinions with slanderous labels.
Mrs. Mandel, I am very concerned about your apparent eagerness to join in this activity. I know that the situation is complex, but joining in a Left-wing hunt for alt-right witches does not seem, to me, to be a very productive use of a conservative’s time.
My impression is that Kirk is strongly pro-immigration. I’ve pointed out previously (in your post 2 days ago) how he used demagoguery regarding the EB5 visa program to support his position (which appears to be a worthy program, but involves only about 1% of legal immigrants). I think that it is quite reasonable, at the present time, to support a significant decrease in legal immigration and to utterly reject illegal immigration. I am very concerned that Kirk — and perhaps you, Mrs. Mandel — are unfairly slandering people taking these views with an “alt-right” label.
My impression is also that Kirk is pro-homosexuality. That is not a conservative position. I don’t closely follow TPUSA, but I’ve seen a few videos in which critics of Kirk have been confronting him on this issue, and the fireworks have been flying. I am concerned that Kirk is deploying accusations of “white supremacy” and labeling people “alt-right” to avoid addressing the merits of this issue. It is a particularly tough issue, because it has been used very effectively by the radical Left to split the Right, and we’ve suffered through a campaign of pro-homosexuality propaganda and lies for a good 30 years now. Perhaps Douglas Murray’s new book will help us to have an honest conversation about the issue.
I think the problem is that the label of alt-right was created by its adherents to apply to themselves. They refer to themselves as alt-right, and certainly think themselves as the alternative to the “right”. An alternative for all those people who don’t feel part of the left, but don’t like the classically liberal right, ie. the true early Trumpers.
There wasn’t that much desperation to cleanse these yahoos when they were driving Trump through the Republican primary. I recall Breitbart.com making it its mission to be home for the alt-right. This new and over looked conservative perspective. But, now having used them to get your ways you want to discard them over a bit of antisemitism? What happened to no enemies on the right. We are in a war for the future of America against the Neo Progressive Globalist Marxists, to defend “OUR” president from the Deep State, we have to fight it with the “General” and troops we have! Have you forgotten Flight 93! Binary choice, Alt-right or Antifa.
The current structures of modern conservative movement have been proven to be rotten and hollow, they need to be burned down, the alt-right is the imperfect tool for the job. Blah, blah, blah, blah blah…
Thanks. I’d like to know more about what set him off suddenly. He’s been getting anti-Jew hate from the alt-right for years, after all.
Ben isn’t obviously left wing on some issues, like Charlie Kirk either. I mean, he’s essentially David French without the Trump hatred. But, theres still Youtube videos about him spewing the nastiest insults.
I think it may be Fuentes showing a Shapiro clip while flicking his switchblade, or streaming a game where he runs down an Orthodox Jew, shoots him, laughs, and says he just ran into Ben Shapiro.
Heres more details on that Kirk event at NC State last nite. He got a couple audience members to admit support for Identity Evropa, supposedly a Neo Nazi organization. Then they had a debate about America becoming less white (nothing about Jews) Ultimately, the crowd gave Kirk a standing ovation.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/11/14/charlie-kirk-confronts-white-supremacy-during-nc-state-event/
Here is the actual video of the question and Shapiro’s response, posted at YouTube by The Daily Wire:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGrWly5uNUI
I’ve seen enough (from other videos) to conclude that Nick Fuentes is pretty reprehensible, so the support for him by the questioners is troubling. However, they raise a good point about Shapiro, quoting a tweet from 2016. The lead question at Boston U (transcript here) was:
This accusation against Shapiro is quite fair. The same link includes Shapiro’s tweet from 2016, of a list of “20 alt-right friendly or alt-right people/outlets,” which does indeed include Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, Ann Coulter, Donald Trump, and Breitbart News.
These are legitimate conservatives. I am not on board with smearing them, and I think that Shapiro’s accusation against them is unfair. (Fuentes seems to be a genuinely bad guy, as do some others on Shapiro’s list, such as Richard Spencer.)
The entire problem with the “alt-right” label is that it includes some bad elements, and some reasonable elements, at least as some people use the term. Milo Yiannopoulos explained this in a 2016 Breitbart article, “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right” (here).
[Cont’d]
Back to the Boston U video. I thought that Shapiro’s answer was evasive. He should be forthright enough to admit that he was wrong, and that he fell into the Left-wing trap of guilt-by-association.
You know how it goes — this guy once liked a post authored by a gal, who once had dinner with a guy, who had a roommate who used a Pepe the Frog meme. Give me a break.
Shapiro wants to carefully define the term “alt-right.” The problem is that there has not been an accepted definition of the term, so other people who may have identified themselves as “alt-right” in the past would get wrapped up in Shapiro’s re-definition of the term. That’s not a good thing.
We’ve seen this before, and it’s a tactic of the Left. They redefine terms — so “genocide” is defined so broadly that any war is genocidal, and even reasonable separation of warring factions is considered genocidal; or “violence” is redefined to include saying something that gave offense.
There’s also a serious problem with Shapiro’s claim that the “alt-right” is a specific, terrible thing. Some people use the term in this way. But it is far from clear that this is what the “alt-right” really is.
Frankly, my general impression back around 2016 was that the “alt-right” was a disaffected group, generally conservative but working class (or sympathetic to them), who want immigration restrictions and are concerned about the negative effects of economic globalization on the working class in America. These are quite legitimate concerns, and as Milo explained in his article, it is not racist or reprehensible. Some people with these views may be genuinely racist and reprehensible, but not all of them, in my estimation. Probably not many of them at all, actually.
Raising these issues is causing serious problems, but I do not think that the problem is with the “alt-right,” at least as Milo defines it. I think that the problem is that, due to extreme political correctness and the radical Left-wing stranglehold on the media, we have been unable to have reasonable conversations about difficult topics — such as:
I suggest that we conservatives stop this campaign of labeling and vilification, and try to focus on addressing issues on their merits.
I do understand Shapiro’s frustration at being trolled by folks who appear to be committed to this Nick Fuentes character who, frankly, I don’t think that I’d heard of until the past week or two.
Well, we already know what the response to that would be.
My impression is that Fuentes has a number of followers, who have been showing up at talks by Shapiro and Charlie Kirk, and trolling them.
I know, I’m responding to myself. I have a correction to make.
I was interested in the whole Nick Fuentes/America First thing, and found a good National Review summary, conveniently posted today (here). The article linked a YouTube video of a question asked of Charlie Kirk — it was a rather clumsy question about immigration, and Kirk responded by saying that he supported Tom Cotton’s “RAISE Act.”
The RAISE Act would lower legal immigration by 50% and replace the current selection system with a point-based system. It looks like a pretty good idea (here is the Wikipedia page on it).
So Kirk and I seem to have very similar positions on immigration. My mistake, and I stand corrected.
There have been several essays about bad folks the conservative movement should rid itself of. Many essays make an analogy to WFB and the John Birch society. These concerns focusing on preventing the conservative movement from being tainted by a variety of small inconsequential groups are perhaps satisfying to our sense of self righteousness but these concerns really hide a total lack of insight. The conservative movement has not preserved our children’s money, we have left them our debts, the conservative movement has not preserved a public education system which allows students to graduate with enough skills and preparation to get employment and begin to have careers, the conservative movement has not preserved the quality of a college degree, this is to say nothing about our social structures. The conservative movement not only has not preserved our cultural foundations, the conservative movement does not even know how great they have failed. Not all groups have failed, the NRA has succeeded beyond what one would have predicted 40 years ago, and Right to Life groups have held ground and slowly pushed back the abortion movement, in spite of the secularization of society. The fact that the NRA (a not naturally attractive group) and Right to Life has at least held ground shows how great the failure of the conservative movement has been.
At the American Mind, American Mind.org, several writes have taken on the idea of Alt-Right. Notably, Michael Anton, flight 93, reviewed, a self published book called “Bronze Age Mindset” by a writer who calls himself Bronze Age Pervert,https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/are-the-kids-altright/. This is a good starting point to reflect on the failure of the conservative movement. BAP says that his book (which reached top 150 on Amazon without publisher or publicist) is a comic exhortation. He and other had been on twitter and organically collected into a comic sarcastic “frog twitter” community. I am 72, I have never been on FaceBook or twitter, so I have no connection, but it is not hard to understand the nihilism. Another author “Uncompliant” https://americanmind.org/post/the-dissident-right-embraces-realism-not-nihilism/, notes that many youth both right and left do not see the lives of basic workers as a realistic choice. They see that the Left has given up on the democracy of the USA, and the Right has capitulated and that the Benedict Option will not be of use, best to get strong and warm yourself on the embers as it all burns down. We live in a society where suicide is rising and young folks are reluctant to have children, if the conservative movement wants to focus on something meaningful, it could try to develop a philosophy with a purpose, with meaning, with a future. To develop this type of philosophy and work in the political arena to make it come to life is hard, slow work, it is much easier to get worked up about 50 people who we say love Hitler, or Nathan Bedford Forrest.
The problem is that if we allow our opponents to define who is a tolerable person and who isn’t while they embrace full-out fascism and communism, Maduro, Che, Pelosi, and Marx, then they will keep coming up with more restrictive demands for people we should condemn.
I condemn progressives and communists. Anyone condemning them is my friend in that regard.
In WWII we embraced Stalin for crying out loud. Now we’re too delicate to accept votes from a few cranks?