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Is Anyone Worried about the Alt-Right?
Several recent Ricochet comments have referred to the “Alt-Right,” mostly in passing. Since I wasn’t familiar with the term, I decided to find out what it actually was. My investigation has been an unnerving experience and I, for one, am worried for this country. Most people will acknowledge that the beliefs and goals of the Alt-Right are despicable. Their proponents are mostly young, self-described radicals who have found the positions of Donald Trump admirable (which, I know, does not make all Donald Trump supporters Alt-Right).
During the most recent Need to Know podcast, Mona Charen, Jay Nordlinger, and guest David French condemned the Alt-Right without reservation. They cited websites where the comment sections had to be shut down due to the volume of venomous comments made against people who didn’t support Donald Trump. Several sources I reviewed regarding the Alt-Right movement highlighted an article from Breitbart written by Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos (pictured), who believe that the movement is mischaracterized. They say:
Previously an obscure subculture, the Alt-Right burst onto the national political scene in 2015. Although initially small in number, the Alt-Right has a youthful energy and jarring, taboo-defying rhetoric that have boosted its membership and made it impossible to ignore.
It has already triggered a string of fearful op-eds and hit pieces from both Left and Right: Lefties dismiss it as racist, while the conservative press, always desperate to avoid charges of bigotry from the Left, has thrown these young readers and voters to the wolves as well.
One journalist who criticized the Breitbart article assessment was Cathy Young at The Federalist who writes:
The Alt-Right movement counters the toxic culture of the left with a toxic brew of its own: a mix of old bigotries and new identity and victimhood politics adapted for the straight white male.
She then describes part of a tweet:
Retweeting an image of a man in a Nazi uniform standing in front of a baker’s oven captioned “Pop ’em in the oven!” may be a tasteless “trolly” joke. When the same person retweets comments about Jews “killing millions in the #Holodomor”—the Soviet terror-famine engineered by the Stalin regime—this looks like something more than “lulz.” The trolls of the Alt-Tight are well-versed in anti-Semitic tropes such as Jewish control of the media (which Yiannopoulos, in his Dave Rubin interview , bafflingly waved aside as a mere statement of statistical fact).
White supremacist Richard Spencer, who runs the National Policy Institute — a tiny white supremacist think tank — coined the term “Alternative Right” as the name for an online publication that debuted in 2010. The online publication changed hands in 2013 when Spencer shut it down. Today Spencer runs the Radix journal and quoted from an article in Time, written by Alex Altman, which characterizes the Alt-Right movement and its relationship to Trump as follows:
Trump’s ascendancy comes at a moment of reinvention for the Far Right. A new generation of leaders like NPI’s Spencer are trying to recast white nationalism as a 21st century movement steeped in social media. The NPI meeting was dominated by young men under 30, many of whom said they were part of an online network known as the Alt (for Alternative) Right. Originally rooted in antipathy to mainstream conservatism, the Alt Right has morphed over the past year into a virtual pro-Trump army. It’s a loose collection of furies who range from provocative Twitter trolls to white-rights activists, garden-variety anti-Semites, proto-fascists and overt neo-Nazis.
revealed that the quote is actually from a Time article that Spencer posted on Radix, which was written by a guy named Alex Altman.
So I have a few questions:
Do you think Donald Trump should condemn the people who profess these beliefs and vocally support him?
Why aren’t Senators and Representatives who are backing Trump condemning them, and encouraging Trump to condemn them too?
Are Trump supporters concerned that they will be identified with these people, especially if the Alt-Right movement strengthens?
As a country that celebrates free speech, any suggestions for how to create roadblocks for this movement?
Published in General
Yeah I actually grew tired of him around the time he parted ways from National Review. I really liked the guy but it was just to damn repetitive.
How will Derb react when trump doesn’t build his wall…that’s what I’m looking forward to. lol I’m just in this for the humor at this point.
I believe Reagan did denounce David Duke in no uncertain terms.
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/02/us/reagan-spurns-klan-support.html
Trump absolutely should denounce the alt right in the same uncertain terms too. That he hasn’t adds to my reasons for never voting for him. He needs to condemn them and explain why he is doing so. But of course, Donald Trump never explains anything.
I understand that white males are having a hard time of it these days, and I do feel sympathetic to them, but at the same time, none of us should encourage them to adopt the whiny victim politics of the left, least of all presidential candidates. Rather, they need to be encouraged to not hide behind excuses–to stand up and be men. This is my problem with Helen Smith and her approach to this problem. I think she validates and encourages the whining. Guess what–life is never “fair”. Do what you can to change the world.
We all need to keep our ideals and beliefs and look at the larger picture. Historically crazy periods are very common. Panics, extremes, scares, stupidity, violence and so forth are all evil parts of the human condition. As conservatives we believe evil will be overcome by truth if we refuse to bow to evil. We can’t bow to it even if it might temporarily help us achieve some goal, like getting the candidate we want elected. We denounce evil in no uncertain terms and doing so serves us well in the long run. We can’t say, oh we have to flirt with evil a little now because of current conditions, but it will all be OK later. NO, NO, NO. We do not believe that ends justify means. We believe that we must act rightly and condemn and fight evil.
Let’s look at some of the many evils of the last century–Jim Crow, Nazis, Soviet Communism, Pol Pot, eugenics in the 30’s, etc. Did they last? No, because good people fought them when they saw them for the evils that they were. There will always be evils in the world and we must fight them without excuse, with faith in the truth and rightness of our own beliefs, and with absolute conviction that means and ends both matter profoundly.
You’re not the only one that’s been worried about ugly pushback. There’s, what? 80-120 million people in this nation that possess something like 300-350 million firearms? And we expect that these folks can hold fire indefinitely against all the pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing the Left does?
I’m late to this post but my 2 cents is that the alt-right needs to be gotten rid of like the John Birchers. However, we didn’t have the interwebs and twitter etc…back when Buckley shunned and refused to publish Birchers. I’m not advocating silencing them, just ridiculing them. I don’t care why they are propagating so much racist, xenophobic nonsense. Maybe I’m more sensitive to it since it’s easier to portray a racist with a southern accent. Maybe I don’t like that they are verifying all the ridiculous (i thought) caricatures the left made of conservatives for years. I have zero respect or use for alt-righter nationalist douchebags.
As far as Milo goes, he serves some useful purpose (as much as anyone can that refers to Trump as “his daddy”) in demonstrating the intolerance of the left on campus. I get the feeling however that he is primarily in it for the show more than any deep seeded philosophical beliefs and is more in it for Milo than anything.
Do you think Donald Trump should condemn the people who profess these beliefs and vocally support him?
If you are a person of any convictions, it is incumbent upon you to refute views which are anathema to you, particularly if you are running for office.
Trump does not have to condemn those “supporters” of his campaign as individuals. All he needs to do is to say clearly that he disavows their specific statements and views. One cannot assume that Trump holds any particular view or principle, as he changes his views more often than he changes his socks.
As a white male who worked in public education for more than 40 years I have lots of experience of being discriminated against for my sex and race. My anger is not against the minority people who were given priority hiring for positions I was more qualified to hold, but rather against individuals, mostly white, who made those decisions. I sense in the alt-right and Trump an animosity against those who received the benefits rather than those who bestowed them.
As in all things, Trump hedges his bets. He takes the position most likely to keep everyone on board. It is just one more sign of his lack of principles and integrity. It is for sure that his campaign would not have qualified for a place in Profiles in Courage.
Susan,
What worries me about the “alt-right” is that they prove to the left that left was right all along about conservatives.
The mainstream media did their best to smear the Tea Party as racist. Most of the Democrats I know believe that to be true. These “alt-right” types confirm that stereotype. We know the mainstream media will always try to smear conservatives as racists and bigots, that doesn’t mean we have to help them do that.
There’s a little problem with the idea that the Alt-Right should be shown the door like the Birchers supposedly were: Buckley did that sort of shunning when modern conservatism was trying to get off the ground. He needed a conservatism that put its best face forward.
Today’s conservatism is too much a part of society to require that sort of treatment. (contd)
In retrospect, the Birchers were right, though, in their concerns about communism.
(Can’t say the same about the alt-right — because I’m still not sure what the term means or who its members are.)
(contd from above)
Furthermore, there’s no one currently in movement conservatism that can enforce such treatment of the type that Buckley handed down. Does anyone think Rush Limbaugh, to name an example, has the capability to do that at this late date?
I don’t agree with this. They were a little bit right and a lot wrong.
Or why people are mad at them except they like Trump and do not instinctively think caucasian and males are evil.
Yes I agree. There are a multitude of reasons why the same response can’t be taken. Everything is different now to use a generalization
Fake John, perhaps you have never been around them to know, but you are repeating verbatim white supremacists. “we aren’t racist we are just defending whites”. Do you really think I would have a problem with someone who doesn’t instinctively think Caucasians are evil? I have a problem with open anti-semitism and thinly veiled racism / nationalism.
I don’t agree with this. Even Trump could do it if he would. That he won’t tells us a great deal. This is why I am praying for another candidate. We need a leader to make our point. Kudos to NR for doing this, but it would be great to put a face to our convictions. I hope Mitt Romney steps up. If no one does, well, long live NR. And it behooves us all to denouce this behavior and Trump as well for refusing to condemn it. I do so every chance I get.
From what I understand Buckley could not overlook their other views merely because they agreed on the threat of communism. There is a lesson to be learned about the alt right there too I believe. The things they are right about don’t offset the things they are very wrong about in my opinion
Out of Nostalgia and curiosity, I’ve been listening to Derbyshire as well. To think that Trump is a fiscal hawk is utter fantasy as it is to misconstrue the absurd lie that Kevin D. Williamson wants to kill white people.
Also, why he thinks that Trump is a conservative is beyond me.
I find John Derbyshire to be one of the most astute and forthright commentators on the right. Throughout the current campaign season, he has demonstrated an accurate understanding of how many conservatives feel disaffected and alienated from their so-called leaders.
OK. I figured out some technical stuff and now I can explain about half of the motivation of the alt-right.
Of course the correct response to the left’s weird obsession with skin color is to not care about color. But instead…
Did it take any special astuteness to divine this? Trump supporters have been shouting it at the top of their lungs for a long, long time.
I’m pretty sure I heard about the alt-Right as the place John Derbyshire went when he was keel-hauled by National Review. I’ve found nothing wrong with anything I’ve heard or read by Derb since then, though I don’t keep close tabs on him.
Is that where he went? Or is there another name for the category he’s in? What little I read about the alt-Right at that time seemed roughly sensible. Maybe it’s been taken over by nuts since then?
I have been amazed at the reactions of the Alt-Right to Kevin Williamson. I read his stuff regularly and have been listening to Mad Dogs and Englishmen since its beginning (long prior to being added on Ricochet). I don’t always agree with Kevin, but I would never question his conservative/libertarian bona fides.
This for me was one of the things that made me really pull back from any thought of voting for Trump vs. not voting at all. When alt-right people began attacking solid conservatives like Kevin and Jonah Goldberg simply because they said the obvious, that Trump was no conservative. At that point I had the sense that there was something very wrong about the alt-right and where they wanted to take the party and the country. They reminded me of the French Revolution when they began to eat their own, something very unconservative.
Looks like part of my post got cut off. Full post below.
I do not know who these Alt-Right are Or why people are mad at them except they like Trump and do not instinctively think caucasian and males are evil.
Seriously. I am looking for what these folk are doing that has everybody upset. Are they chopping off heads? Are they intimidating voters? Are they rioting in the streets and burning down cities? Are they shooting cops? What makes these Alt-Right guys worse than the other bigots running around the country?
What? No it doesn’t. I’m fairly convinced that the social media noise/version of alt right is a creation of the Left. And we fall for this trick of theirs every time. Reacting as if their fictions are real. But they are not, that is, not until we make them real by “condemning” them.
They create the fiction/caricature, convince us everyone believes the caricature actually exist. Then we start responding as if the caricature is actually real, shouting out condemnations all over the place. Then they laugh at us, as we self-implode over something that was never anything more than a joke. They do this stuff all the time. We fall for it every time. Gosh darn it. None of alt right (social media version) has anything to do with conservatism, except it exposes our never ending gullibility. Why do we continue to believe that the Lefts’ caricatures of conservatives are actual photos of actual conservatives? Look in the mirror does their caricature look like you? No. So don’t respond as if it is.
I’m worried I’m opening up a can of worms here but here it goes. Race-realists believe that IQ, criminality and the innate character of a nation is determined in large part because of the genetics of this or that group group of people. Nicolas Wade (former science writer for Nature and New York Times) is one of these people as is Charles Murray. Race-realists believe that without genetic engineering, Asians and Jews will have higher IQs than whites while African and the indigenous peoples of the Americas will always (on average) have lower IQs and economic performances.
Identitarians believe this and they go one farther and believe that whites have to stick together. That’s where the problems come in.
So there are apparently many here who think a candidate is somehow diminished by some random outsider supporting them. Or that the candidate has some duty to disavow any supporters who hold views they do not agree with.
That is folly. If that is the standard, it will never end, every loon and crazy will be given the power to discredit a candidate who they have never met.
You can say Trump has not disavowed the alt right, but clearly he has disavowed racism. Of course, that has done nothing to quiet the accusations of racism, has it?
As TKC pointed out: Reagan used to say “they are voting for me and my ideals, not theirs”. If a candidate is liable for the views of every one of their supporters, there is no such thing as an acceptable candidate.
Well Trump won’t condemn them because they aren’t known well enough by name. So if he says he condemns the Alt-Right, he could alienate people who don’t know what the Alt-Right is, but think it must include them.
What is really scary about the Alt-Right though is that they come from across the spectrum. Social Conservatives, Tea Party Conservatives and Libertarians have made jumps to join their ranks, despite tremendous incongruities of thought. Especially considering many of these people (extreme radicals who consider themselves Neo-Reactionaries) reject the Enlightenment and Classical Liberalism.
I know Nazi comparisons are cliche, but the Nazi inner-circle was steeped in lore about a past before Christianity in Germany – and before enlightenment values.
Don’t be mistaken: the Alt-Right as of now, is a small group, with voices enhanced by the internet – and Neo-Reactionaries are an even smaller group. They fall into a much larger group that has become discontent of classical liberal values of universal: Free Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Exchange and tolerance – the only difference between the Alt-Right and Progressivism on this account is what side’s freedom will be oppressed.
The Alt-Right has coined the misnomer “Cultural Libertarianism” to try to disguise its simplistic “Anti-Left, Pro-Right” platform. However I think there is an opportunity to forge a coalition with those on the left disaffected by Progressive Intolerance around the ideals of Liberalism – and real Cultural Liberty.
The left exaggerates to be sure, but when people supposedly on the right, and supporting the GOP nominee say things the Alt-right has been saying, and the nominee does not condemn those things, it shows that the sentiment that many of us believed did not exist not only exists but gets some legitimacy from the candidate. Sometimes what you don’t say speaks louder than what you do.
I’m not too worried about the alt-right. They have obviously intelligent members and can be interesting to read even if you completely disagree with them. By the way, the alt-right is a catch all term that does include groups like white supremacists, but also is home to paleo-conservatives, men’s rights advocates, and many other splinter groups. They’re not all super scary evil people. Where’s Cat III when you need him?
<sarc>Well, as you know, Kevin wants to murder the white working class. That monster.</sarc>
Take a look at Claire’s post from a few days ago. This is what just one journalist, Julia Ioffe, has been subjected to since writing an unflattering article about Melania Trump. She has had to get police protection. Trump refuses to call off these goons, saying that she brought it on herself. And she is just one of many who’ve been targeted by these thugs. And you really don’t find this disturbing? Really?