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Understanding the Alt-Right
Actually, I’m not terribly interested in understanding the alt-right as a movement; what I find fascinating is the evolution of the term itself. There are two wildly different definitions being applied, and I believe that the left is using that confusion of terms, intentionally and with malice aforethought, to denigrate a large portion of the population as racist, right-wing oppressors.
I first heard the term during the 2016 election cycle, when I started getting a large part of my news and analysis from various YouTube channels. Although I was not aware at the time, the meaning of the term had already morphed away from the original. In those days, the term alt-right was said to refer to a loose collection of people who, while generally of the right, were not happy or satisfied with the established leadership of the Republican Party and the mainstream conservative movement. Given that public polling routinely shows about twice as many people identifying as conservative as identifying as Republican, it seemed this had the potential to be a large and broad coalition.
And as far as I could tell, it included me; by that definition, I am alt-right, being of the right, though not mainstream, but rather representative of an alternative point of view.
It was only after the election that word began to filter out about an earlier, original definition for the term. We found out that the name was originally coined by a guy named Richard Spencer, the leader of a very specific, fringe group of white nationalists. Looking at their actual policy proposals, in that case alt-right seemed to refer more to being, well … leftist. It is a variant of socialism, essentially identical to several other identity-based movements in this country, populated by people who are black or Hispanic. But, while all those other movements are considered left-wing, this group, apparently for no other reason than them being white, are labeled as part of the right.
Spend any time listening to this group, and you’ll quickly come to realize that the reason it is a small, fringe group is that it is a toxic blend of white supremacy and socialism, the sort of movement that has been unable to gain any meaningful level of traction in this country since about the time I was born.
I’m more than fairly certain that I’m not one of those.
Thus far, the evolution of the term had followed a fairly typical path. A term starts with a specific meaning that applies to a small group of people with a specific set of beliefs or characteristics. Then over time, the term is generalized to refer to a much larger group, many of whom do not share those original beliefs or characteristics. This is something that happens with almost any movement that becomes a sizeable group of people. Most political movements start with a small, dedicated group of hardcore believers. If it grows to significant size, over time the original beliefs are usually watered down and tempered, to appeal to a larger audience. It is not unusual for the original beliefs to disappear almost entirely.
This is the point where the evolution of the term takes an unusual, and in my experience, unique turn. After having been generalized to a much broader meaning, it was retracted back to the original belief set, so that it no longer legitimately refers to anyone outside of Richard Spencer’s group.
I promised malicious intent on the part of the left, and here it is. They use the two definitions almost interchangeably, but with a very distinct pattern of usage. They use the broad, generalized definition when assigning membership to the alt-right, but the original, specific meaning to ascribe beliefs to the people so labeled. The practical result of this is that if you are not an elected Republican official, and are also anywhere to the right of Che Guevara, they will call you alt-right. And that membership justifies their certainty that you are a white supremacist follower of Richard Spencer’s loony white socialist utopia.
It would be as if we labeled large numbers of random Democrats as communists, and therefore in favor of killing off a substantial portion of the US population to achieve their communist paradise. Of course, for a valid comparison, we would have 90 percent of the media repeating those claims and having earnest panel discussions about their plans for genocide.
So, am I alt-right? Are you? It depends who you ask, and what they intend. And the left isn’t really interested in your opinion; they’ll be deciding for you.
Published in Group Writing
Simon, you’re not in the loop, man. I’ve seen it hundreds of times on the Rightwebs, and dozens of times on Ricochet. I have to agree with Jamie: claiming there was nothing racial in it doesn’t even rise to the level of a bad joke. But if you never ran across the term, you’re a lucky reader.
Whoa, that’s not what I claimed exactly. Yes, racists and trolls and lefties used it in a racial way, especially in the examples of harassment that Jamie mentioned. Obviously so. On Ricochet? I want quotes.
That does not mean that it was always and inherently racial. Cuckoldry, in general, was not always racial as far as I had known the term. Cuckservative in particular, well, I think that’s muddy at best. As I say, I didn’t take it to be a racial term, and I understood it right away in decidedly non-racial terms. Am I alone in that? Maybe, but excuse me for not taking Jamie’s word for it. Or don’t excuse me for not taking Jamie’s word, I’m really beginning to not care.
I live overseas. I get most of my ‘news’ here on Ricochet. Apparently I either have a piss poor memory or do not participate on those threads.
Love you Dude. I am not bitching, just informing.
I keep typing it because so many seem to want to gloss over truly abhorrent behavior by those who ally with us. Even “acceptable” alt-righters like Milo and Sargon have engaged in this sort of thing. Milo sent Ben Shapiro a picture of a black baby the day his daughter was born. In this very thread he’s upheld as a good example of an alt-right ally. I find it disgusting.
I read somewhere that in at least one white supremacist group, all of the members turned out to be undercover law enforcement from one agency or another sent to investigate white supremacists: there were no actual white supremacists in the group. Don’t know if that is true or not, but they are definitely a “fringe group dying on the poisonous vine”.
When I saw them marching in Charlotte, I wondered how many were under cover law enforcement; this hysteria over white supremacy has a lot of people very worried about a very tiny number of people. It is ridiculous.
Who cares? Tell Milo (whoever he is) to send me pics of black babies. It will not bother me in the least. Dude, I think you are too worked up about this.
If you’re talking about me then I’m not glossing over anything. Harassment is ugly. Trolling is ugly too. Even when done by people I’ve agreed with or have found to be entertaining. If Milo did that to Ben Shapiro then I disagree with it, though I’m not exactly sure what it’s supposed to mean. It’s ugly and trollish, most likely in any event. I won’t presume to get into Milo’s mind or motives, but after having listened to Milo extensively in 2016-2017 I also don’t think he’s racist – or else he’s the moliest mole I’ve ever seen biding his racist time keeping his racist intent secret from his audience for two plus years.
I don’t think either Milo or Sargon are alt-right, especially not in the white supremacist sense. Both say they are not alt-right. Both reject identitarianism at least outwardly. Hard to be white supremacist if you reject identitarianism.
I didn’t hold them up as alt-right allies. I held them out as examples of people who have been associated to the alt-right who are not racists.
Well, I’ve been following a segment of the alt-right since 2012, if not earlier. Like actually participating in a segment of those forums that referred to themselves as alt-right – and it pre-dates 2015.
And the term <i>did</i> shift.
Judge Mental has the picture better than you do.
I ran across it first here, unfortunately…
“Alt right”, like “neo-con”, has shifted meanings and had several meanings.
Neocon was once clear enough: used to be a liberal, but events convinced them otherwise. People like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Midge Decter, Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz. Then it became a not-so-secret codeword for “Jewish conservatives”, with the not-so-secret implication “Who make money off the world’s wars”. Then in the GWB era, it became synonymous with all Republicans, and supposedly all conservatives were neocons, even the paleocons. The definition changed for common sense reasons, partly for nasty ones, and partly for politically convenient ones; once the Iraq war was generally felt to be a mistake, everyone was a neocon. Today it doesn’t mean much anymore; maybe something like “strong on defense, aggressive foreign policy, socially mildly liberal or moderate”. We wouldn’t use it now without defining who we were talking about.
Alt right once meant something you’d think was praiseworthy: rethinking the sacred doctrines of conservatism in a more realistic light. applying a little Lenny Bruce or George Carlin to problems that always seemed to call for a tweedy conservative think tanker. That’s what the word meant, and who’d argue with that? Unless you hated the right, so naturally the line was that these admittedly mixed characters were in league with disgusting people. That’s what you expect from the Left.
Of course, there are always a few jerks who strive night and day to prove them right, and began, from the right, to wave through any dissenting “thinker”. Milo was supposed to be “our” Neil Patrick Harris. Instead he turned out to be “our” James Gunn. The Alt right didn’t have much of a border control service, so a number of clowns took up residence. By now, the conservatives were split between people who said “If this is the alt right I want no part of it” and others who said “Whatever these people say or do I’ll defend them”.
So yeah, alt right doesn’t mean what it once meant, and whose fault is that?
This was the impetus for the post; I watched this a couple of days ago. The portion discussing the alt-right label is from 7:30 – 10:45. BTW, the reporter explicitly calls it an umbrella term. But anyone who is called alt-right is called white supremacist. This is the whole point I was trying to make.
If you mean Milo, Sargon, McInnes, (or for that matter, Lauren Southern and others) were comfortable with the identifying as “alt-right” until the most identitarian alt-righters like Richard Spencer said they were only alt-lite, and real alt-righters really should be totally comfortable making common cause with white supremacists; and only then did these “alt-lites” dissociate from the alt-right label, the problem is that the alt-right label has stuck. “Alt-right” stuck to “alt-lite” personalities because they did once at least flirt with the alt-right.
“Alt-right” has also stuck to publications like Breitbart, which under Bannon, seemed to be supporting at least the “alt-lite” faction of the alt-right. And now Breitbart is more mainstream. Ergo, many people, not just leftist out to make the right look as bad as possible, believe the alt-right has become less marginalized in conservative culture.
Moreover, every less-savory element of the alt-right (or even alt-lite) has a reason to ride on the coattails of relatively more-palatable elements. It’s not just leftists trying to associate the right with identitarian, conspiracy-mongering loons. Those loons wanna associate with the “alt-liter side” until eventually they are linked to the mainstream, and they seem to have had partial success in doing so.
You mean one of the types of people Trump explicitly condemned right before the he talked about ‘fine’ people on both sides?
Well, it did and it didn’t. The earliest origins of “alt-right” do appear to lie with Richard Spencer’s mentors. That said, before Richard Spencer rose to prominence, “alt-right” seemed a logical name for things that were, well, alternative right. An alternative to the three-legged fusionist stool of conservatism that establishment politicians who self-identified as “conservative” at least had to pay lip-service to.
Notably, conservatives who were rethinking the sacred doctrines of conservatism in a more realistic light were not all alt-righters. Some were, for example, ReformiCons, who advanced more populist policies, and were kinda hated for it at the time, because they were centrist populist policies. Marry populist politics with flipping the Left the bird, though, and you’ll likely end up at least alt-lite, and from there you do have to deal with the origins of “alt-right”, including its mentorship of chuckle ducks like Richard Spencer.
I agree that that is what I meant, because the label was fluid at that time.
I don’t agree with your conclusions. Part of the reason that the Alt-Right label has stuck to individuals and publications despite the actual landscape having shifted (though the individuals and publications involved haven’t necessarily shifted) is precisely because some simply aren’t keeping score sufficiently yet they’re willing to pronounce; others have an interest in being just this obtuse; stil others would be calling the same tune regardless of the facts on the ground. Though I agree that this applies not only to leftists.
The landscape has shifted, but not in such a way to keep “alt-right” from attaching to a lunatic fringe that’s broader than just white supremacists.
Vox Day was pretty popular around here during GamerGate. Vox Day has also gotten pretty loony, and has been willing to strategically flirt with neo-Nazis (check out point 14). Oh, he says he’s just using neo-Nazis as useful idiots of a sort to advance a nobler agenda, but… you don’t have to be duplicitous yourself to kinda doubt him.
A trolling style of politics has become important to the, if we can’t call them “alt-right” anymore, newer right. And trolling does blur the lines between contrarianism, actual hate, and conspiracy-mongering wingnuttery. GamerGate contrarianism occupies tribal space overlapping with Pizzagate conspiracy-mongering, which overlaps with the tribal space of those who think it’s nuts to describe “white genocide” as a nutty conspiracy theory, which overlaps with… well, folks who… are OK making common cause with neo-Nazis to advance their agenda, and that overlaps with… Tribalism is on the rise, and these tribal overlaps count for more now, while ideology counts for less.
Those who are into, shall we say, “alt-lite” or new right personalities may regard as tragically unhip the mainstream squares who see Alex Jones, Posobiec (he of PizzaGate fame), Vox Day, Molyneaux, Southern, Sargon, and McInnes as all “alt-right”. But lotsa folks are tragically unhip without being in cahoots with the Left. Mainstream conservatives especially are known for being tragically unhip.
Now, maybe you already do think mainstream conservatism is just a useful tool of the Deep-State-Left-Wing complex, but it shouldn’t surprise you if those who are still mainstream squares (or at least squares who were until very recently mainstream) don’t see themselves that way, and see what they call the “alt-right” as embracing the lunatic fringe.
Yeah, one of those. Exactly. The ones Trump condemned. Th ones that some commenters on Ricochet, among other places objected to being labeled “Nazis” because it allegedly did the Left all kinds of invisible favors.
LR, I didn’t bring up Trump, this had nothing to do with Trump, one of my earliest comments on the thread was “this isn’t about Trump”.
They’re evil.
So… what? This just sounds like “alt-lite” and “alt-right” lives in all of your heads.
Do the people “unfortunately” lumped with alt-lite and alt-right (in the minds of onlookers) need to alter their beliefs to be more palatable to this open-conversation, big-tent conservatism?
Or do you guys need to be more open to ideas slightly more uncomfortable than mainstream conservative politics?
It increasingly seems to me that the only uncomfortable ideas mainstream conservatives are open to come from the left. And lumping all of the “alternative right” with Richard Spencer’s National Socialists makes you feel better for living in your own bubble. Dare not to associate there.
Here is a story that includes Saul Alinsky’s Rule for Radicals:
http://www.openculture.com/2017/02/13-rules-for-radicals.html
This was obviously applied with a heavy brush during Obama’s presidency and it is in place to continue without him for years. Back when W was president, there wasn’t the extreme polarization we have now, the labels, the venom (especially on social media), the highjacking of words – the culture has been brainwashed that these hideous tactics are how you get the change you want – remember hope and change? Read radical rule #13 – that’s the big one. The whole thing is diabolic in my opinion, and light years away from the Judaeo-Christian principles and values that our country is based on.
For Max Boot and other Never Trumpers who embrace the left for cash from the media. Did they forget who brought down their beloved W?
Cuckservative was specifically meant to be a term the describes a group of conservatives who give what is their children’s to be used by people (specifically foreigners), clean up the mess that those people make, and take pleasure in it.
It is a conglomeration of the cuckoo bird and the pornography.
The cuckoo bird will find another bird’s nest to lay it’s egg in to be cared for by another bird. For people, it would be the traditional form of the word “cuckhold” which pre-dates pornographic interpretations of the word – a man who unwittingly spends his resources on raising another man’s offspring.
The pornography side of it is simply taking pleasure in it.
There is a group of conservatives who take moral pleasure in giving this country away to people who do not care about this country. They are the pro-amnesty contingent of our politicians and coincide with welfare apologists or those who don’t see welfare as more important than open or more relaxed borders (Reason.com libertarians, for instance, who spend more time pontificating on open borders than welfare reform). They have no issue taking away from their own people to give to another people.
When you believe the pre-amble dedicates the constitution to the founders’ progeny, that’s what you get.
But whatever. People with second and third hand knowledge of this stuff are clearly better informed than someone who has been reading the originator of that word for 6 years. I even read the book.
I think the alt. groups were an outgrowth of the more formal Usenet structure. Anyone could (and did) start an alt. group and content was unmoderated. They were sort of the outlaw groups of Usenet before the pornographers and the Web killed them.
Is this supposed to make us think better of the term or find it less offensive? This kind of bad faith trolling is why the alt-right is incompatible with conservatism. The Alt-Right are just progressives with a different policy preference. Same tactics. Same identitarian politics. No interest in debating ideas, just trolling and beating down anyone who strays from their orthodoxies.
So what? The “all of your heads” our (rather than your) intuitions about what alt-right means are living in happens to be a lotta heads. It’s just not all that leftist to conceive of the alt-right more like I do than like you do. Instead, it’s fairly normal (among people who recognize the alt-right term at all). Those advocating ideas we see as alt-right have to deal with this fact.
Hey, I’m all for a broad Overton Window. But… to keep it broad, some things gotta give.
That link makes it clear that Vox Day is, at best, a white separatist. FWIW, we had a discussion on Ricochet recently on the topic of whether white separatists were distinguishable from white supremacists.
The much-esteemed anonymous posted a glowing review of Vox Day’s book “Cuckservative” back in May 2016. Back then, when John spoke so glowingly of a book I hadn’t heard of, I would often buy it (and James Lileks had used the word several times in the flagship podcast and I had no idea what it was supposed to mean). In his review, John says they only spend a few pages on the word Cuckservative, and that is probably right, but I had a hard time getting past those three pages. It was clear from those few pages that word Cuckservative was meant to imply that letting brown-skinned people in the country was the same thing as letting brown-skinned people [have sex with] your wife and raising brown-skinned children as if they were your own.
I think a reasonable argument could be made that term Alt Right does not necessarily have racial overtones (though its enthusiastic adoption by people with explicit racial overtones is enough to keep me getting too close to it), but I think the word cuckservative has clear and unmistakable racial overtones that were intentionally placed in the word from the people who originated it. This is precisely why people are sending videos of black men having sex with white women to people accused of being “cucks”.
I very much agree with this: not necessarily.
For example, neoreactionaries are part of the alt-right and include constitutional monarchists who don’t care about race if there’s loyalty to the king. Still, racial politics is prevalent enough on the alt-right that it makes sense for the category as a whole to have acquired racial overtones.
And the extreme traditionalists.
Isn’t it those in the alt-right/lite that are arguing that we need to be more like the left? They argue that we need to adopt leftist tactics and rhetoric in order to attain political victory. That is part of the reason why they are “alternative”, after all they seek to create change—not the mainstream conservatives.
Yes. More like the left isn’t just like the left, but a lot of it seems to be “use the weapons of leftism against leftists”. Only, “use the weapons of leftism against leftists” doesn’t tell you what you’re using those weapons for, and they could be used for a lotta things.